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Custom Air Travel Forecasts
Improve your financial, capacity, and commercial planning with granular air traffic demand projections.
Our air traffic forecast is a comprehensive, forward-looking tool that incorporates macroeconomic growth, disposable income trends, and fuel costs. Extending to 2040, the forecast reflects the growing importance of strategic planning in an industry increasingly shaped by sustainability goals, market forces, and an emerging multipolar geopolitical landscape. We recently integrated Pyxis, Bain’s consumer intelligence platform, to enhance the precision of our North America forecast.
The forecast is updated regularly using the latest information. Here is the outlook as of the end of 2025:
- Annual air travel demand returned to pre-pandemic levels last year, with revenue passenger kilometers (RPK)—the number of paying passengers multiplied by the total distance traveled—reaching nearly 107% of 2019 volume (see Figure 1 above). The 2040 outlook remains relatively unchanged at a global level compared with previous forecasts. However, this is less true for regional forecasts (see Figures 2 and 3).
- While economic pressures weighed on performance in North America during the second and third quarters, a more positive long-term macroeconomic outlook improved the 2040 demand projection. As a result, our forecast for the North American market has marginally improved.
- China’s domestic market outperformed expectations over the past year and is projected to grow to almost 2.5 times its 2019 traffic levels by 2040. At the same time, performance in India during the third quarter came in below prior expectations, lowering the broader Asia intraregional 2040 outlook by 5 percentage points from the previous projections.
- Weaker-than-expected performance over the past two quarters in Europe–North America traffic has led us to modestly reduce long-term growth expectations for the transatlantic corridor through 2040.
- Price stimulation from competitive pressure and low-cost carrier growth has become less pronounced than in the previous forecast. However, carbon mitigation costs are weighing less heavily on demand, resulting in a broadly neutral net impact on the long-term outlook.
Projected market and financial information, analyses, and conclusions are based (unless sourced otherwise) on external information and Bain & Company’s judgment. They are intended as a guide only and should not be construed as definitive forecasts or guarantees of future performance or results. No responsibility or liability whatsoever is accepted by any person, including Bain & Company, Inc., or its affiliates and their respective officers, employees, or agents, for any errors or omissions.
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