Air Passenger Traffic To Increase By Double In 2032

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), says airline passenger travels will double by the next 20 years.

The Acting Administrator of FAA, Michael Huerta in a statement said more people would be flying more miles this year and expressed optimism that the trend would continue in the years ahead.

According to him, the US airlines will carry 732 million passengers this year, 746 million next year and eventually 1.2 billion in 2032.

For FAA, the forecast is a talking point in support of the agency’s efforts to develop Next Gen, a satellite-based air traffic control system that will replace the nation’s aging, ground based system. Using GPS technology the system will presumably increase capacity and reduce gridlock by allowing planes to fly closer together and transit airports more efficiently.

Some aviation experts however questioned the validity of FAA’s numbers as well as the agency’s rationale.

“I think that ‘the air traffic will double” statement is a good way for FAA to say this is why we need Next Gen”, said Tom Reich, director of air service development at Avport, an airport management and consulting company.

Other observers however, agreed with FAA, citing micro-economic factors – the backlog of airplane orders at Airbus and Boeing, for example – and larger ones pegged to the global economy.

“Look at the aircraft orders at Boeing and Airbus. If you wanted to order an airplane from Boeing right now, you wouldn’t get it for seven years”, said Steve Cowell of SRC Aviation.

At the same time, socio-economic factors point to a parallel increase in passenger demand, said Mark Kiefer of Mark Kiefer Consulting.

“The propensity for our travel increases – and increases markedly – with increases in income. The short-term outlook may be anaemic but eventually we’ll return to more normal levels of growth”.

Handling that growth, whether it doubles or not will be the real challenge, and while Next Gen may counter congestion in the skies, it won’t have impact on crowd traversing the nation’s airports.

“The story on the ground is more mixed. There are certain airports that we already know are chronically congested and have real physical constraints. La Guardias, for example is already maxed out ad is not going to get any bigger”, said Kiefar.

Reward Akwu