Budget airlines to drive plane demand in next 20yrs: Boeing

Smaller planes will dominate aviation orders worldwide in the next 20 years, driven by the needs of budget airlines in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, Boeing said Friday.

Nearly three in four of the 41,030 new commercial planes expected to be delivered in the period at a cost of $6.1 trillion will be single-aisle, according to the US aircraft maker.

"As you would expect because of the dominance of (low cost carriers) and requirements to connect shorter ranges, 72 percent of units will be in the single-aisle category," Dinesh Keskar, Boeing's senior vice president for Asia-Pacific and India sales, said at a briefing in Singapore.