The air transport market represents geographic zones of the most frequent aircraft movements. World air transport can be shared between narrow-body and wide-body aircraft due to the specificity of operations. To understand better, narrow-body aircraft usually have one aisle inside the cabin, however this also represents lesser amount of available seats (up to 200). Nevertheless these kind of aircraft burn less fuel and are relatively of lower operational cost (costs due to performing operations). Wide-body aircraft can sustain higher load and are usually aircraft that have 2 aisles and significantly bigger capacity when compared to narrow-body aircraft. These kind of aircraft are often built for long-haul flights between locations that are very frequent for passengers (so called HUBs, for example London Heathrow, Abu Dhabi in UAE, J.F. Kennedy in New York and similar) and do require a significantly higher load capacity to be efficient.
Narrow-body aircraft are primary used for transportation inside smaller geographical regions and in shorter distances. Wide-body aircraft are used for the transportation of high number of passengers between huge distances in world scale regions or continents.
BIGGEST AIR TRANSPORT MARKETS
Due to the geographical division, there are 4 defined main regions of air transport. The wide picture of the market includes markets of North America, Europe, Middle East and South-East Asia as focal points of the world air transport. The routes between mentioned regions have their own specificities and differences of growth rates.
MIDDLE EAST – ASIA
Due to progressive economic prosperity of both regions, huge accumulated wealth of the Middle East nations (petroleum) on one side and mass transition of population of South East Asia to upper classes of society (mass export and manufacturing) on the other, this market not only is the biggest market in the world but also has the second highest growth rate. The indicators in 2018 inform about this incredible growth. In fact, the number of available seats (capacity supply) on this market has been doubled since 2010 and now amounts to around 62 million seats per year.
EUROPE – MIDDLE EAST
In the fourth place, by market size, is the market of Europe and Middle East. Nevertheless, it is the market with the highest growth. Since 2010, the market has increased by 2.18x in size. The yearly growth rate in average is 10% which, in the macroeconomic aspect, is more than impressive. The data shows that much of this kind of huge growth has been influenced by extraordinary expansion of Turkish Airlines in the European air space.
EUROPE – ASIA
Twice as less growth has been recorded on the market of South East Asia and Europe with the average yearly growth rate of 4.8%. Even though in 2010 this market was the biggest, in the last 8 years since it has only increased for 1.46 times and in 2018 it offered capacity of a total of 56 million seats available yearly.
NORTH ATLANTIC
The average growth rate since 2010 for the market between North America and Europe is 5.3% and the total capacity that is displayed in available seats has increased for a total of 1.58 times and amounts to total of 58.2 million seats available yearly. This is, currently, the second biggest market in the world. In respect to being the oldest market of air transport in the world, it is worth noting the trend of airlines shifting from older types of aircraft whose prices are higher to newer aircraft that are being used elsewhere. These costs have, in a certain amount, limited the growth of the market in comparison to newer markets.
