Do you remember the first time you ever boarded a flight? The excitement, the unfamiliarity, and the wonder?

There are many people, particularly in countries like India and China, who will experience these feelings and connect with new places around the world for the first time in the coming years.

As part of the mission to create a better-connected world, Airbus is closely invested in making flying more accessible.

Even the small changes that Airbus engineers work on each day ultimately make it easier for people around the world to board a plane:

• Airbus engineers working on cabins have made it possible for more seats to be added with the same level of comfort, so that airlines can carry more passengers and more people can travel at more affordable prices.
• The Airbus teams working to make aircraft more fuel efficient – delivering breakthroughs like the A320neo which uses 20 percent less fuel – help to make tickets cheaper for passengers, and reduce aircraft emissions.
• And the Airbus teams who support airlines to train crews and service aircraft ensure that passengers all over the world benefit from comfortable, reliable, on-time flights.

When Airbus unveiled the first A300 in 1972, commercial air travel was taking off. Over 300 million people took to the skies that year, taking advantage of this new way to stay connected.

Now, over 4.3 billion passengers board a plane each year, and that number is predicted to nearly double by 2037 to 8.2 billion.

Much of the growth has been driven by dynamic young airlines with new, lower-cost business models, which are growing at a faster pace than the world average. In 2018, they carried an estimated 1.3 billion passengers, approximately one in three of the world’s total scheduled passengers.

The A320 family (and increasingly its largest variant, the A321) is an aircraft particularly suited to high-growth airlines and high-growth markets, and has helped to make this possible. In fact, Airbus is the leading or exclusive supplier to most of the world’s low-cost airlines.

But perhaps the biggest shift on the horizon is the growing accessibility of air travel in the Asia-Pacific region.

More than half the total number of new passengers over the next 20 years will come from this part of the world. In the mid-2020s, China is expected to displace the US as the world’s largest aviation market, and India will take third place after the US, surpassing the UK by around 2024.

Airbus is working closely with these emerging markets where millions of people will soon be boarding their first ever flight.

Given that more than half of the aircraft in service or on order in China and India are for Airbus planes, when the majority of these first time fliers get on a plane, they will be travelling Airbus.