The first public presentation of Airbus’ new A330-200F Freighter, which is currently undergoing its certification programme. The new freighter can carry more than 69 tonnes of cargo on non-stop flights of 3,200 nautical miles (5,926 kilometres) and will enter service later this year.

Airbus says it expects freighter fleets to grow five-fold by 2030 as the region dominates the market. By 2030, airlines in the Asia-Pacific will buy 8,000 aircraft worth US$1.2 trillion as the region becomes the world’s largest air cargo market, Airbus said in its latest market forecast.

The market forecast says cargo traffic will increase 6.3 per cent a year throughout the region – compared with a global forecast average of 5.2 per cent – with the Asia-Pacific region continuing to dominate the global air freight market. This will result in carriers expanding their all-cargo fleets by five-fold to 1,500 aircraft by 2030.

A significant number of these will be converted from passenger aircraft, according to Airbus which predicts approximately 340 new production freighters will be delivered over the next 20 years. These will be mostly widebody aircraft and represent 40 per cent of expected global demand for new freighters.

Strong domestic growth in China, India and other emerging Asian nations will contribute to high demand. The Asia-Pacific fleet will nearly triple from 3,910 to a total of 11,170 airplanes, Boeing said.

The Asia-Pacific region will need nearly 9,000 new commercial aircraft by then, Boeing said. “Twenty years from now, more than 40 per cent of the world’s airline traffic will begin, end or take place within the Asia-Pacific region,” said Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s vice president for commercial airplane marketing. “That’s a big leap for a region that was not even mentioned in our earliest Boeing market forecasts back in the 1950s.”