A 1% cut to its long-term outlook for global passenger jet demand was announced by Airbus on Wednesday, with the planemaker pointing to the Iran war and escalating trade tensions as twin headwinds that have knocked aviation's post-COVID rebound off course.
Across the full forecast window, the company puts industry-wide deliveries at 42,060 jets — a figure covering 2026 through 2045 that represents a 1% reduction from the prior edition of its rolling outlook. Single-aisle planes account for 33,920 of those deliveries, with widebodies making up the remaining 8,140 — each category falling by 1% relative to the prior forecast, Reuters reported.
"That post-COVID recovery has effectively flattened," said Antonio Da Costa, head of market analysis at Airbus.
Fleet replacement demand is now pegged at 47% of all deliveries, up from 45% in the previous version of the forecast, as airlines retire aging aircraft at a faster pace than they add new capacity, the company said. On annual passenger traffic growth, Airbus lifted its published rate to 3.9% from 3.6%, though Da Costa cautioned that stripping out methodological changes reveals the number actually declined from 4.1% on a comparable basis.
Airbus expects about half of all deliveries during this period will go to Asia. The company slightly increased its estimate for India’s domestic traffic growth to 9.1% from 8.9%, while it lowered China’s domestic market outlook to 4.7% from 5.4%.
Airbus said that traffic through the main Gulf hubs has mostly returned to normal, thanks in part to a fragile ceasefire in the Iran conflict. However, the overall outlook for the Middle East is still uncertain.
Looking at the full 20-year period, Airbus expects demand for 42,060 new aircraft. Of these, 19,820 will replace older jets and 22,240 will support fleet growth. Single-aisle planes will make up 81% of the total, while widebodies will account for 19%.
Airbus has been ramping up output heading into this forecast revision. The company set an internal goal to surpass 900 deliveries for the first time in 2026, even as it maintained its official full-year guidance of 870 aircraft. Its first-half deliveries totaled 351 jets, a 15% gain over the same period in 2025, with a backlog of roughly 9,000 aircraft underpinning production across its product line.
Capacity expansion plans across the industry have pulled back as carriers contend with elevated fuel costs linked to the Iran conflict, a dynamic that feeds directly into Airbus's reduced long-term projections, according to Reuters. Da Costa pointed to carriers extending the service lives of existing aircraft and increasing seat density as additional factors moderating demand growth, adding that AI-driven operational improvements could compound those effects over time.