Widebody world: growth / replacement trends — October 2018

In the past ten years since the global financial crisis the airline industry has been performing strongly. Total traffic demand since 2008 has grown at an average annual rate of 6% in RPK terms (and slightly less in the numbers of passengers), capacity by just over 5% and passenger load factors have risen from 76% to 82%. In the past five years, there has been an acceleration in growth rates: since 2013 demand has averaged an annual growth rate of 7%.

All this appears a little above the long term trend (depending on how you work it out) of 4.5%-5% pa growth.