Boeing: Airlines will see steady climb By Romaine Bostick BLOOMBERG NEWS Boeing Co., the world's biggest plane-maker, said yesterday that commercial airlines would buy $5.2 trillion in aircraft and services in the next 20 years as the industry recovered from a two-year slump in air travel. Airlines will spend $1.9 trillion for as many as 24,275 aircraft by 2022 and $3.3 trillion more on related services, Boeing estimates. That would more than double the world's active fleet of aircraft to about 34,000, Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement released from the biennial Paris Air Show. The forecast is based on a growth rate for world travel of 5.1 percent a year. Boeing's top commercial aircraft executive, Alan Mulally, said last week that carriers were showing more interest in ordering planes as passenger traffic rebounded. Boeing, which typically releases a long-term industry forecast each year, didn't give specific sales forecasts for itself. Airlines had been canceling or delaying purchases since 2001 as a stagnating economy, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a deadly virus in Asia kept people from flying. The slump has hit Boeing and its main rival, Airbus SAS. Boeing's orders fell to 251 last year from a peak of 600 in 2000. Mulally reiterated his expectations last week for Boeing to deliver 280 airplanes this year and 275 to 300 in 2004. Airbus said during the air show that it might win orders for about 250 planes this year, 40 percent more than the company predicted in January, partly because it was taking business from Boeing. Airbus is based in Toulouse, France, and is 80 percent owned by European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. The world's freighter fleet will double in the next 20 years to 3,501 airplanes, Boeing said. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.carib-link.net/naparima/naps.html TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************