Lion Air disaster: just a blip in Asia’s runaway air travel boom?

The Indonesian carrier’s crash that killed 189 people raises questions over whether Asia’s aviation sector is struggling to keep up with breakneck growth.

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Relatives mourn those who died in the Lion Air disaster. Photo: EPA

Published: 9:00am, 9 Dec 2018Updated: 5:42pm, 24 Jan 2019

Asia is set for a boom in air travel, according to a range of forecasts, but the eye-popping predictions have also brought concerns about congested airports, a lack of pilots and flight safety.

The rise of Asia’s aviation sector – described as “unprecedented long-term growth” by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – is being driven by middle class travellers from China and India, the emergence of new players like Indonesia and Vietnam, and intense competition among low-cost carriers. Technological and entrepreneurial innovations have also played a role, as has the region’s overall economic good health.

Even so, the industry as a whole has been left scrambling to catch up to increasing demand – a complex, urgent and expensive process that has been made even more difficult by the Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people in October.

“The aviation boom in Asia is a game changer,” said Conrad Clifford, the IATA’s regional vice-president for Asia-Pacific. “We are forecasting that Asia-Pacific will see an extra 2.35 billion annual passengers by 2037, for a total market size of 3.9 billion passengers. This growth is a huge opportunity for the region’s economies and aviation but also a challenge in terms of infrastructure, human capital, regulation and investment.”

Airports Council International (ACI) predicts that by 2040 China will become the largest passenger market with just under 4 billion passengers, or about 20 per cent of all global traffic, while India will have 1.3 billion. The Asia-Pacific region, over the same time, is expected to contribute more than 42 per cent of all international air travellers.

The most rapidly expanding countries in the world for air passengers, according to the ACI estimates, will be India and Vietnam, with China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines also in the top 10. Of the 10 airports that grew the fastest from 2007 to 2017, nine were in Asia, including Bangkok, Surabaya, Indonesia, and Zhengzhou, China. (The only non-Asian city was Istanbul.)

The world’s fastest growing airports between 2007 and 2017