Boeing needs 43,000 more planes to meet demand, concerned about US-China tariffs

The world needs to produce 43,000 new aircraft over the next two decades to meet booming demand, Boeing's CEO forecast on Sunday.

Dennis Muilenberg, chief executive of the US aerospace giant, revealed the outlook upgrade to reporters in London before the sector's Farnborough Air Show starting Monday.

"We continue to see the aerospace market grow very strongly," said Muilenberg.

"We see $8.1-trillion marketplace in the next ten years" for commercial, defence and services, he added. "We further increased our estimates in the next 20 years.

"We expect the world to need roughly 43,000 new commercial airplanes. That's up from last year's estimates."

European arch-rival Airbus had forecast last week that the world's passenger fleet would more than double to 48,000 aircraft over the next 20 years, on the back of keen demand from emerging economies and low-cost airlines.

In a revised market outlook, Airbus had put the value of nearly 37,400 new aircraft required to meet global demand at $5.8 trillion by 2037.

Boeing Co is also concerned about the impact of possible trade tariffs on the cost of running its supply chain, but has not yet seen any impact from US-Chinese trade tensions on its business, Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said on Sunday.

"The discussion right now is proposed tariffs, ongoing discussions. So in terms of actual implementation and things that are impacting us, we haven't seen a material impact yet," Muilenburg told reporters.

"We are very much engaged in the discussion. We are concerned that it could affect supply chain costs. But note that supply chains are flowing in both directions between (these) countries as we both support existing fleets as well as build new airplanes."

Washington recently imposed 25-per cent tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports, and Beijing responded with tariffs on the same amount of US exports to China.