JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #112 - April/May 2017 - 3

EDlTORlAL

Will the horizon stay clear?

54th year

President and CEO/Publisher:

Frédérique Mutel - mutel@jeccomposites.com

Editor-in-chief & Media director:

By

Frédéric Reux - reux@jeccomposites.com

Senior editor:

Stéphanie Viallefond - viallefond@jeccomposites.com
Franck Glowacz - glowacz@jeccomposites.com

Writer & Conference manager:

Cécile Lagoutte - lagoutte@jeccomposites.com

Contributor:

Marie-Hélène Corbin - corbin@jeccomposites.com

Deputy-editor & Graphic designer:
Antoine Morel - morel@jeccomposites.com

Graphic designer:

Candice Herbreteau - herbreteau@jeccomposites.com

Development Director:

Anne-Carole Barbarin - barbarin@jeccomposites.com

Marketing Director:
Sandrine Dumarquez - presse@jeccomposites.com

Technical & Business manager:
Thierry Saint-Martin - saintmartin@jeccomposites.com
Tel: +33 (0)1 58 36 15 73

Technical & Business developer:
Kim-Oanh Truong - kim@jeccomposites.com
Tel: +33 (0)1 58 36 15 74

Mediakit: www.jeccomposites.com/Mediakit
Subscriptions:
www.jeccomposites.com/magazine-subscription/

Printing: Chirat, Saint-Just-la-Pendue (42), France
Legal registration: ISSN 1639-965X
Dépôt légal : 2eme trimestre 2017

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Total Average
Qualified Circulation:

38,239 copies
BPA December statement 2016.
Print circulation of 23,203 and
electronic circulation of 15,036.

"

Frédéric Reux

Editor-in-chief
reux@jeccomposites.com

The aviation sector provides visibility to
the different players in the field, which
is reassuring. It is also reassuring that air
transportation continues to grow and
resist crises of all kinds, whether related
to energy, health, financial, or military
issues. Neither freight nor passenger
transportation seems to suffer from
these paroxysms. You might think that
all these events that shake up the world
are just another incident for the aviation
sector. Generally speaking, if you look at
the last 30 years, air traffic has doubled
every 15 years, and the forecasts for
2030 are following that trend. As a
result, demand for aircraft is closely
aligned to the air traffic. No fewer than
33,000 passenger and freight airplanes
are to be delivered by 2035.

All of this to observe once again that
builders are facing an enormous
challenge. The two majors are certainly
ready for that, and are working daily
to improve their products and services
and to increase their productivity.
Single-aisle aircraft account for 70% of
future demand, and that is a segment
where they are very dominant - but
also the segment where there is some
competition and which inevitably
arouses keen interest. Embraer,
Bombardier, Sukhoi, ATR and others
are lying in wait! And newcomers are
getting ready to make their entry. The
Commercial Aircraft Corporation of
China (Comac) has started ground tests
on its C19, and the test flight is expected
in June. But in aviation nothing is ever
completely certain, as we have seen
with the additional two-year delay that
Mitsubishi Aircraft announced for its
MRJ. More competitors usually means
more competition, which is rarely
without consequences for suppliers,
with prices moving downwards, for
example. Not to mention that for
composites, while things may be clear
as far as ongoing programmes go, it is a
different story for new developments. It
is not certain that content in composite
materials will be as high in future, and
that would push prices down. The
competition with other advanced
materials has never been so strong. It's
a shame that the penetration rate of
composite materials in aircraft is not
also closely aligned with the air traffic.

As we might have suspected, the
forecasts of the major builders - as
well as those of the International Civil
Aviation Organisation (ICAO) -
emphasize that growth will be global,
but stronger in emerging countries.
This can be explained in particular by
the explosive growth expected for the
middle classes, which should grow
in size from 2.8 billion people to 4.8
over the next 20 years. China is in the
thick of it, of course, and by 2030 its
domestic traffic will become the world's
most voluminous, ahead of the United
States. India is going to grow even faster,
proportionately speaking, although the
volume will remain smaller than China's.
Another point to remember is that air
traffic is growing faster than the world's
GDP, according to analysts, by at least So there is visibility, to be sure, but not
1.5 points. And that is considerable.
necessarily without some clouds.
No112 April - May 2017 /

"

Technical editor:

jec composites magazine

3
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #112 - April/May 2017
