China's air travel will continue to grow strongly to nearly five times its present level within 20 years, a senior Airbus official predicted in Beijing Tuesday.

Adam Brown, Airbus vice president for Customer Affairs division, said China's airline traffic would witness robust, long-term growth. "Passenger traffic carried by the country's airlines will grow at an annual rate of more than 20 percent this year and next," he said.

It would grow at a more normal rate averaging 8.1 percent annually after that to reach almost 500 billion revenue passenger-kilometers -- nearly five times its present level -- by 2022, he said.

"Air travel will be driven by continuing robust growth in gross domestic product and personal income," he said.

It would also be driven by deregulation of ticket prices, privatization of airlines, less restrictive bilateral air service agreements with other countries such as that recently signed with the United States, and an increasing number of visas being issued to outbound tourists, he said.

Further stimulus to travel will be provided by the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the Shanghai Expo in 2010 and the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010, he said.

An additional driver of growth would be the planned free-trade zone between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Between 1980 and 1998, demand for air travel on China's domestic air routes, fed by a sharp increase in disposable income, multiplied 20 times, growing at an average of 18 percent a year - compared with an average annual growth of 8.9 percent for all modes of transport, Brown said.

During the same period, China's airlines achieved even more stunning growth of more than 20 percent per year on international routes, where traffic multiplied 37 times.

In the next 20 years, the country's airlines will need to acquire a total of no less than 1,316 mainline passenger jets of at least 100 seats a piece to accommodate growing travel demand and to renew their fleets, Brown said.

These aircraft will be valued at about US$140 billion, he said.

"This puts China in second place, behind only the United States, as a potential market for Airbus products," Brown said.

It means that one in 12 of all jetliners produced during the next 20 years will be taken up by China's airlines.

The 1,316 jets include 701 single-aisle aircraft such as the A320 family, 178 small wide bodies like the A330-200, 332 intermediate wide bodies like the A330-300 and A340 family, and 105 very large aircraft like the A380, Brown said.

Airbus's business in China has been steadily expanding since it first entered the country in 1985.

The Airbus fleet in service in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao has grown to more than 230 today from just 29 in 1995.

(China Daily July 14, 2004)