The ten markets combined over the coming two decades, as the sum of the income model's projections and Singapore's time trend. Supply-side and network growth are left out, so this is not a full forecast.
Conditions and method
Status: projection (income-only central projection from income per person and population; supply-side expansion, network formation and low-cost entry are not modelled).
The line is the sum of the markets’ central paths, Singapore’s time trend included, and reads 4.09 billion in 2044. For the 9 income-model markets together, the model’s 2044 total has a median of 4.07 billion passengers and a 90% range of 3.56 to 4.71 billion (not plotted), on the narrow side because the markets’ shocks are drawn independently. Their central paths alone sum to 4.02 billion, 1.2% below that median. The scenario lines change the income path, and the optimistic and pessimistic ones the population projection too; population is most of the gap between them in 6 of the 10 markets.
‘Global’ here is the sum over the 10 covered markets, which together are not world traffic. The chart counts passengers a year, not passenger-kilometres. Its totals are sums of national counts. Singapore counts transit passengers, China and Japan count their own airlines only, and India’s international count was Indian airlines only before 2015. In all 3 markets whose ladder result counts passengers, the fitted curve’s median income elasticity (0.4 to 1.2) is below the ladder value, and most of each gap is already there in 2024. China, whose ladder result is inconclusive, is not counted.
The income model leaves out supply-side, network and low-cost-carrier growth. The baseline grows about 1.54% a year. Re-run with actual income, on the curve fitted to all years, the method projected less traffic than was flown in most or all windows of 5 years or more ending by 2019 in each of the 7 markets checked; 2 more have a series too short for it. Outside the United States the bands held no such 15-year window.
Baseline: the IMF growth forecast to 2030, then income growth rising or falling toward one assumed long-run rate, about 1.8% a year, which has no external source. Optimistic and pessimistic: income growth to 2030 is 1.4 and 0.6 times the baseline’s, on the UN high and low population variants. Structural deceleration: from 2031 income growth converges to 1.2% a year. Disruption: income growth is 3 percentage points lower in 2025 and 2026, less so to 2029, so income stays about 10% below the baseline. Singapore follows a time trend, so these income paths do not apply to it.
Two refit tests set the method against holding trips per person flat: it did no better one year ahead and was closer several years ahead in most markets. The second, on data to 2014, was 4% to 28% low in 2019 in all 7 markets tested and from 35% low to 9% high in 2024. A third, across the pandemic, starts from a predicted level, so its error counts the curve’s gap to the data and across markets is several times the other two. Neither refit passed the project’s own sampling screen, so their figures are less firm than the projection’s. These tests reach 10 years at most; the projection runs 20.
The projection uses passenger data through 2024 and the IMF’s October 2025 growth forecast, which runs to 2030. Later observations exist for some markets and are not used. Income growth per person is IMF real GDP growth minus UN medium-variant population growth. The IMF path embeds its own population projection; the two differ most for Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Each market’s international share of traffic is held inside its historical range. Short-history markets borrow their curve’s shape from the others.