According to a new whitepaper released by Alton Aviation Consultancy ahead of Singapore Airshow 2026, “ Asia is emerging as the engine of global Aviation growth, with India, China and Southeast Asia forecast to account for eight of the world’s ten fastest growing air travel markets between 2024 and 2044.” In an exclusive interview, Mabel Kwan, Managing Director at Alton Aviation, Singapore highlights more detail on this report with Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor of Aviation World where she presents how India is one of the world’s fastest growing Aviation markets, underpinned by robust economic fundamentals and a rapidly expanding middle class. Excerpts…

Q: What are the key takeaways from the latest whitepaper of Alton Aviation Consultancy?

A: There are few key messages that we wanted to bring out to the public through this whitepaper. Asia continues to be a driver of growth but more specifically, the growth is not just driven by China. We see a rather broad-based growth story across South Asia which will bring a lot more sustainability and the credibility of Asia as an aviation region in the future.

The reason why I say that is based on the analysis that the growth for Asia is definitely higher than the whole world in terms of RPK (Revenue Passenger Kilometers). But more interestingly, going forward, eight out of the ten fastest-growing routes will come from the Asia region. That is sort of like the growth story that Asia will bring to aviation. And obviously, different sub-segments have different nuances around this growth story.

Q: So, which region will anchor the future global air travel demand among India, China and Southeast Asia?

A: I think China and India for sure. But as a region, Southeast Asia region will begin to be positioned up there from the China and India perspective as well.

Q: What are the factors taken into consideration before compiling such an extensive Whitepaper?

A: We wanted to understand in terms of what are some of the macroeconomic factors that the Aviation stakeholders will be concerned about. So, things like tariffs, geopolitical circumstances and in general, affecting supply chains. How are the stakeholders reacting to it because we’ve done a lot of work from both across the Aviation value chain. We refine some of these forecasts from these results and with what we see on the ground, some of the strategies around MRO, airlines that place to maybe certain regions looking at different trajectories, studying higher and lower trajectories ground from an aviation stakeholder strategy’s perspective.

The companies are learning how to deal with the supply chain issues or the tariffs in the MRO. There is a resilience in the Aviation industry after COVID and they are looking at contracting, what needs to change to make sure that escalation in costs can be absorbed or covered. They are looking at changes in terms of pool of suppliers from a diversification perspective, also from a geopolitical perspective that there is a need to diversify your supply sources.

And thirdly, also in terms of technology and digitalisation, because manpower issues, talent issues, are quite pertinent right now and a solution that is obviously everyone is embarking on.

“The whitepaper highlights India as one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, underpinned by robust economic fundamentals and a rapidly expanding middle class. While China continues to play a dominant role, Alton notes that Southeast Asia is an emerging growth region, led by markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.”

Q: In terms of the aircraft orders and the OEMs delivery capabilities, how do you evaluate it from the advisory point of view?

A: Unfortunately, the truth is that there is a backlog. From the large OEMs perspective, the wide body backlog is of around 6 years and for narrow bodies, the timeline is much longer maybe 8 years or 10 years. If you order new aircraft now, you’re really not going to get it to boost your capacity in the short to medium term. A lot of the airlines are looking at alternatives and they are retaining and retrofitting some of the existing fleet to make sure that they are brought up and services stay relevant and inhabited without having actually new aircraft.

On the MRO side, there’s also a larger demand for maintenance of the aircraft and a bit of the retrofitting work that goes with which the airlines are dealing with it. At some point in time, we also touched on the topic of consolidation in the industry. If you draw an analogy to how LCCs came about in previous years, especially in Europe, there was also a wave of consolidation and similarly for Asia there will be some form and we see that as a reaction to how do you strengthen your balance sheet. How do you strengthen your positioning in the market?

Some of these consolidations will of course position for the future but at the same time perhaps rationalise some of the rules as well for aircraft capacity and demand.

“Alton’s report outlines that international traffic in Asia-Pacific grew by 8.0% in 2025, outpacing global RPK growth of 6.8%. Carriers across the region have launched more than 600 new routes since 2015, significantly improving access to underserved destinations and enhancing intra-regional connectivity.”

Q: After the IndiGo crisis which made the entire Indian Aviation into surrender mode, there are few startup airlines wanted to make an entry. But they are facing challenges into getting an aircraft. How do you analyse such issues?

A: This could be due to the reason that already OEMs are busy with giving delivery to their pre-existing customers. So, isn’t it viable for them to try and get a pre-owned aircraft rather than looking forward to a new aircraft? The natural tendency is to go for a leased aircraft and pre-owned of course because from a Capex perspective to kind of put in money at the front to acquire new aircraft is a very big undertaking.

Unfortunately, the leasing market is also very tight because a lot of the airlines are looking at extending their current leases because they don’t have new aircraft for delivery. There’s availability but generally the aircraft will be a little bit older and the lease rates may not be as competitive as they were a couple of years back when there wasn’t so much of a supply chain constraint.

Q: From the MRO perspective, how do you see this segment growing into Asia-Pacific region in the next few years?

A: If you look at the trend of the new-generation aircraft and engines, right now the first and foremost the older engines will actually take up the bulk of the MRO service requirements. There will be gradual shifting as the new generation aircraft are put into service eventually, there will be a requirement for some of these engines to be serviced after 8-10 years down the line. The type of MRO service requirements changes because the composite requirements are slightly different and the skill set of the MRO operators will need to change and the product offer will need to be tailored to the new generation aircraft due to shifting in terms of the services. Secondly, it’s also being geared up to service a different type of engines in the new generation line.

Q: Despite of one of the safest modes of transport, we are witnessing an increase in aircraft incidents. How can regulator make the sector more robust with more stringent safety rules?

A: If you look at the history of aviation, there have been a few crises and also a few incidents. The biggest one was 9/11 which was also one of them associated with travel in the aviation industry. There are sometimes tends to be a knee jerk reaction to putting in place a lot more restrictive regulations to try and make sure that the confidence of the public is not affected due to the safety issues. There is a role of course for regulations to be in place so the regulators will definitely have to look at a set of requirements that addresses some of the safety concerns. At the same time, we have to strike the right balance between too much regulations and what is required to make the industry continue to grow. Because, regulations places restrictions and also sometimes additional operating costs on the industry. For example airlines, their margins are already very certain so there has to be a lot of communication and stakeholder coordination between regulators and users as well as operators to try and strike a right balance between the three different sets of concerns that each have because we really don’t want a knee jerk reaction. After 9/11, there was quite a lot of new rules and regulations that came into place with regards to tracking and boarding of passengers but that went away after a while because as people got more confident about the ability to at least control and mitigate some of these safety risks the situation improved. Technology also can play a big role and I think there is a lot of involvement in AI and technology detecting some of these risks before they even occur.

I think for us prevention is definitely better than cure even in the MRO industry in terms of maintenance, the move towards looking at safety and security has to be prevention so how do you make use of data and technology to better assess the risk before a casualty or fatality happens. The stakeholders just have to work together as there’s a lot of concerns about confidentiality, who has the data, who manages the data but there’s data available and it’s really how you and different stakeholders can make use of this data to create an environment that allows for more robust monitoring.

Q: India is focused on developing its airport infrastructure with plans to develop 100 more in next ten years. How do you see this growth patter from a global perspective?

A: If you look at the density of airports to population so for both India and China compared to the US, they are still far bigger in terms of number of airports per population. India is one of the fastest growing markets with the ability to connect. It’s very much also a driver of economic growth and the country definitely needs more airports. Right now, a lot of traffic is concentrated on the large metros but in line with the growth of the tier 2 and tier 3 cities there has to be an ability for them to tap out the connectivity. I’m always a firm believer that connectivity is a means to economic growth and if you look at all the big cities, one thing that’s quite common is the connectivity factor. It is not that you have to moderate the number of airports but I think it has to be a more coordinated strategy amongst from the India perspective to look at how are you going to serve both India as well as internationally. Are you looking at a few key hubs that look at international traffic, that looks at positioning itself as a hub even for international-to-international flights!

The rest of it, I would say it’s more of a regional connectivity story whereby you don’t need massive infrastructure but you need infrastructure that serves. If you go back to fundamentals what is the need for air travel, it’s really just moving passengers more effectively from one place to another.It just requires a more coordinated approach as to how do you sustainably build airports and the aviation industry whilst looking at a multi-modal type of connectivity.

From an airport’s perspective there’s a lot of infrastructure development which requires huge investment. We’ve had situations where some investors or some governments are looking at building an airport that’s oversized with two runways.