Boeing has new forecasts for the world’s future needs for planes, and crew to fly and maintain them, and the future they see is pretty rosy.
Boeing likes forecasts like that because they mean a rosy future for Boeing, one of the world’s two big jetliner manufacturers, along with Airbus.
The latest version of the report, which the company calls the CMO, or Current Market Outlook, shows an 11% uptick from last year’s report, and for the first time adds numbers of cabin crew estimated.
What they see as needed over the next 25 years:
- 39,620 new airplanes, with most of them single-aisle planes such as the Boeing 737 and A320 families
- 617,000 pilots
- 679,000 mechanics and technicians
- 814,000 flight attendants
One reason the employment numbers are so much higher than the airplane estimate is that the single-aisle planes are often flown on routes that make several round-trips a day, requiring more than one crew per plane. Another is an expected wave of retirements of older crew over the next few years.
