The Center for Asia Pacific Aviation says this growth is coming from low-cost air carriers. These airlines were responsible for more than half of all passengers who flew last year. Ten years ago there were no low-cost carriers.
Martin Craig is the head of the Pacific Asia Travel Association. He says Asia’s growing middle class is causing the growth.
“This massive increase in intra-Asian tourism and air travel is simply driven by the fact that so many more people are going into the so-called ‘middle-class’ status with discretionary income and one of the first things they want to spend their hard earned spare cash is on going overseas.”
Southeast Asia’s middle class is now estimated at around 500 million people. It is expected to reach as many as 1.7 billion by 2030. But Mr. Craig says that estimate may be too low.
To fly all of those passengers, industry experts say the airlines will need to train almost 200,000 pilots.
Experts say the main domestic air travel markets are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Those countries have a combined 25 low-cost passenger airlines. And more are expected to start flying.
Brendan Sobie works at the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation. He says passenger air travel in Laos, Burma and especially Vietnam is growing fast.
“Being a, a frontier emerging market and having a lot of economic activity in Vietnam -- so it has some catch up to do in order to approach some of the other markets in Southeast Asia -- from a growth and low cost carrier penetration standpoint we’re starting to see that catching up now taking place, and IATA sees Vietnam as one of the three largest growing markets in the world in the next few years.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
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2013-11-25