17 March 2026 (Geneva) — The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its Long‑Term Demand Projections (LTDP) for air travel, showing that global air passenger demand is expected to more than double by 2050.
“The outlook for air travel is positive. People want to travel and, under all our modeled scenarios, the demand to fly is expected to more than double by mid-century. That is good news for global economic and social development because aviation growth will catalyze opportunities, including jobs, around the world. Our Long-Term Demand report gives governments, industry, and energy suppliers a robust basis for long‑term planning. It underscores the need for policy frameworks to support key success enablers such as efficient infrastructure development, market access facilitation, regulatory harmonization, and an effective clean energy transition,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.
Regional Outlook: Growth Concentrated in Emerging Markets
The pace of growth will be uneven across regions, reflecting differences in demographics, market maturity, economic development, and connectivity potential. Under the mid‑range scenario, Asia‑Pacific and Africa are expected to be the fastest‑growing regions over 2024-2050, with CAGRs of 3.8% and 3.6% respectively. Europe and North America are projected to grow more slowly, at 2.5% and 2.8%.
The LTDP identifies the fastest‑growing markets as intra‑Africa (4.9%), Africa-Asia‑Pacific (4.5%), Asia‑Pacific-Middle East (3.9%), intra‑Asia‑Pacific (3.9%), and Africa-North America (3.8%), highlighting the importance of investment in aviation infrastructure and regulatory frameworks in developing regions. By contrast, several Europe‑centered markets are among the slowest growing.
Two long-term trends identified in the report are worth noting:
IATA’s proprietary model used by the LTDP is based on a comprehensive global econometric model built on the best available data from international institutions and IATA’s own DDS demand database. The unique dataset compiled for this work comprises more than half a million observations across around 41,000 directional country pairs over 14 years from 2011 to 2024. The LTDP model incorporates population, employment, flight frequencies and aircraft size at the country level.
The most significant demand driver is real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, adjusted for PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). Long-term country-specific economic projections are obtained from the publicly available OECD global long-run economic scenarios. The LTDP scenarios are also linked to scenarios for how the evolution of the global energy transition may impact long-term demand. The model’s projection performance has been validated against historical data and shows an average prediction accuracy of 98% at the industry level.