Boeing has supplied over 90 percent of the world's dedicated air-cargo capacity, both for express cargo and for industrial goods. Its products include the 767-300, 777 and 747-8 freighter aircraft, and the 737BCF and 767-300BCF conversion freighters.
"The air cargo market has faced several years of below trend growth," said Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing. "As trade continues to recover, we're confident the air cargo market will see growth over the long-term."
Sustaining that growth will be two primary factors: the expansion of e-commerce, which Boeing projects will expand to a $3.6tr market by 2020; and the ongoing development of China's express-delivery service sector, which is set to grow by 55 percent in volume and 39 percent in revenue by 2020.
In general, the OEM finds that market segments linked to the Asian regional economies will see faster average growth in air-cargo volumes than other regional markets. However, the express carriers still will trail dedicated freighters in cargo volumes: the latter will represent more than half of all air-cargo traffic over the 20-year period, and will continue to provide the majority of cargo capacity.
