Bullets:
In the next twenty years, over half the world’s market for aviation will be in China and South Asia.Demand forecasts from Airbus and Boeing call for thousands of new planes, with hundreds of thousands of jobs to maintain and repair them.Hainan Island has already built a premier maintenance hub, one of the world’s largest hubs is under construction in Kunming.Both are ideally located to serve most of the world’s population, within four hours’ flying time. They also are in Free Trade Zones, and aircraft enjoy fast turnaround times, without tariffs and customs fees.
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Report:
Good morning.
Airlines across the world are repositioning themselves and shifting to Asia, because this is where most of the growth will be. That means more airports, more jets, more pilots. It also means high demand here for maintenance and repair facilities. Airbus already has large manufacturing hubs in China, and point out in their Global Services Forecast that the afterservices market in China will more than double, to over $63 billion by 2044.
Airbus’s biggest customers are in China, and Airbus forecasts China will need nearly 10,000 new planes by 2044, and that means another half a million or so new jobs to fly and maintain those aircraft.
These slides are from Airbus’ GSF, and China’s aftermarket industry today is the 3rd largest in the world, but will be the largest in twenty years. This is important too, that China’s market is considered separately from Asia-Pacific. Afterservices in China, plus Asia-Pacific, will grow to $112 billion in twenty years, which is over half of the total global demand.
These are maintenance and repair hangars on Hainan Island. Hainan already is a booming hub for airlines in Asia to get their planes quickly serviced and repaired, then in the air again. These facilities are just three years old, and as of last September have serviced 2,400 aircraft, and repaired or replaced 60,000 parts.
A big advantage for Hainan is that the entire island is a free trade zone. Aircraft arrive and are waved through within just a few hours after landing, without paying customs deposits. The spare parts that go onto the aircraft don’t have tariffs applied, and those two features alone slash maintenance costs to airlines by double-digits.
The second draw is the time savings. Hainan is a one-stop shop, and everything can be completed in a fraction of the time compared to other repair hubs in North America or Europe. Lost time is lost money, and Hainan’s faster turnaround times mean more money.
Hainan’s final major advantage is its location. It’s within four hours’ flying time of 21 countries and almost half the world’s population, and remember again that Southeast Asia is where the fastest growth in this industry is happening already.
This is the Yuxi Circle. A few years back, researchers and map geeks were asking themselves, what is the smallest circle that could be drawn, where half the population of the world lives inside that circle? They crunched the numbers, and Yuxi, China is the center of that circle. Yuxi is just on the other side of Dian Lake, and Yunnan officials will soon say the same thing to airlines across the world that Hainan is: Half the population of the world also lives within four hours of flight time from Kunming Airport.
The largest aircraft maintenance and repair base in Southwest China is under construction here in Kunming, and that will open in 2028. Kunming Airport is also in a free-trade zone, and this is a $200-million-dollar project to service Boeing and Airbus aircraft, and of course COMAC planes, with the objective of turning Kunming into another major maintenance hub for South and Southeast Asia.
Be good.
**Resources and links:**Airbus, Global Services forecasthttps://www.airbus.com/sites/g/files/jlcbta136/files/2025-10/GSF%202025%20-%202044%20_%20Presentation%20.pdfMore global airlines using province as MRO hubhttps://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/12/WS698d2c4ca310d6866eb38d83.htmlHainan’s aircraft repair hub soars as magnet for global airlineshttps://english.www.gov.cn/news/202510/17/content_WS68f1fcdac6d00ca5f9a06dd9.htmlConstruction underway on aircraft maintenance hubhttps://en.people.cn/n3/2025/1229/c90000-20407819.htmlHainan’s aircraft repair hub soars as magnet for global airlineshttps://en.hiipb.com/newsroom/show-138.htmlAirbus says China will become world’s largest afterservices markethttps://aerospacetechreview.com/airbus-says-china-will-become-worlds-largest-afterservices-market/
The Yuxi Circle: The World’s Most Densely Populated areahttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-yuxi-circle-the-worlds-most-densely-populated-area/
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