Boeing’s forecast for Russia and central Asia aircraft demand is unchanged

Privately-run S7 Airlines is one of Boeing's key customers in Russia (Boeing)

Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Boeing has not revised its aircraft demand projections for Russia and central Asian countries, insisting that the region will still require some 1,300 aircraft within the next two decades, says Sergey Kravchenko, president of Boeing Russia and CIS.

“We expect the downscaling of our production outputs for several years across our entire product range [due to the COVID-19 pandemic]. For instance, in the narrow-body segment it will be down to just slightly more than 30 aircraft [per month], although until quite recently both Boeing and Airbus were capable of producing up to 60 such aircraft each,” Kravchenko said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 state-run TV broadcasting company.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) “has serious plans too, and I imagine that the pandemic has affected them as well. But I believe that, in general, the [Boeing 2019] forecast for Russia [and CIS] remains in effect – the region will need almost 1,300 aircraft within the next 20 years, that’s US$270 blllion of value. This is a huge pie that will be enough for the Russian manufacturer, as well as for western [manufacturers],” he rounded up, with a note of diplomacy.

Speculating on the pandemic’s affect on the wide-body aircraft segment, Kravchenko admitted the likelihood of a decline in demand. “The first

to get back will be domestic air travel, which will require narrow-body aircraft. But in the longer-term perspective, our market analysts foresee that the demand for wide-body aircraft will restore in two or three years, and the industry will get back to normal.”

Since Boeing is one of the main purchasers of titanium produced by Russia’s VSMPO-Avisma company, any downscaling of the aircraft manufacturer’s production rates will affect the purchase volumes from its Russian supplier. “Of course, cutting our [our] production to half the normal rates will affect our vendors. We are planning for this down cycle not to last too long, maybe a year and a half or two. Then we’ll go back to growth and VSMPO, as one of our best suppliers, will go back to sustainable growth as well,” Kravchenko assured.