World’s Airports Expect to Reel In 9 Billion Passengers in 2025

A new ACI forecast, which highlights future traffic development from the perspective of the airport industry, predicts a doubling of current passenger numbers within the next 20 years. Releasing the ACI Global Traffic Forecast 2006 – 2025 this week, ACI Director General Robert J Aaronson said that the forecast indicates that over nine billion passengers a year will use the world’s airports by 2025, up from 4.2 billion in 2005.

Passenger volumes are predicted to grow by an average of four percent annually over the 20-year period, with Asia leading at a rate of nine percent until 2009 and challenging North America as the largest market by 2025.

India and China will be the two fastest growing countries in the world with 10.4 and 8.1 percent growth respectively. Aircraft movements will grow by an average of just 2.8 percent, which indicates a trend towards larger aircraft with higher load factors.

Aircraft manufacturers are currently developing aircraft with new materials that are more efficient, economically, in fuel usage and in impact on the environment. The impact of these new aircraft and how they will shape the world’s aircraft fleet were taken into account in this latest survey.