Airbus: Details of Tianjin assembly line likely very soon
Boeing to grow with China's aviation industry

Shanghai -- China's airline operators plan to spend US$280 billion to purchase 2,900 new airplanes over the next 20 years, according to a forecast made by the Boeing Company  on Wednesday.

A visitor looks at a model of Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Shanghai, east China, on Thursday October 19, 2006. Boeing 787 Dreamnliner is a kind of plane under development currently and Chinese airlines have ordered 60 Boeing 787 freighters in all, Xinhua News Agency reported. [Xinhua]

By 2025, China will become the world's fastest-growing airplane market and the world's second biggest civil airplane market after the United States, said the Boeing report.

With the rapid expansion of travel and cargo market, the number of airplanes in China will quadruple to 3,900 in 2025.

Randy Baseler, vice president of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes, estimated that the aviation market in China will expand at an annual rate of 9 percent in the coming years.
Since 1990, the number of flights in China has increased by 13 times, but the number of airplanes has not kept pace, said Baseler.

The world airline operators will invest US$2.6 trillion in total in the coming two decades to purchase 27,000 new civil airplanes, said the Boeing report.

In a recent development, the Avibras, a Brazil-based regional airplane producer said here on Tuesday that over the next twenty years China will need 590 regional airplanes capable of carrying between 30 passengers to 120 passengers.