Karen Walker is live on the ground at Singapore Airshow with Darren Hulst, Boeing's vice president for commercial marketing, discussing the OEM's outlook for the region, airliner demand, LCC growth, cargo and more.
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Karen Walker: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week air transport podcast. I'm ATW and Aviation Week air transport editor-in-chief, Karen Walker. I'm delighted to welcome you onboard. And as you can probably hear from out there, we are at a very exciting venue right now—we're at the Singapore Airshow, and even more exciting, I'm sitting here and delighted to be joined by Darren Hulst, who is the vice president commercial marketing at Boeing. And of course, Boeing is exhibiting here. Darren, first of all, welcome. Thank you for joining us and I believe that you very soon are going to be giving a little bit of a Southeast Asia focus on your outlook.
Darren Hulst: Thank you so much for having me. This week we'll be obviously focused on Southeast Asia here based in Singapore and talking about the dynamics for air travel near-term and all the way out into the next 20 years.
Karen Walker: Excellent. So that makes sense being right here in the center of that region.
Darren Hulst: Right.
Karen Walker: And of course, Singapore is a big aviation center in itself, beginning with Changi Airport. So can you just start, give me a few key takeaways of what you are seeing for this region.
Darren Hulst: For Southeast Asia, I think it's a tale of a couple of different storylines. One, if you look over the next 20 years, the demand for new airplane deliveries in Southeast Asia's almost 5,000 over the next 20 years. So a tremendous amount of demand in the market, but we're also looking at a region whose airlines still have a lot of airplanes they need to order in the near term, relatively speaking, the size of the single-aisle fleet is still recovering back to pre-pandemic levels. The age of the fleet here is a little older on average because of the lack of new deliveries in the last few years. And so, there's a lot of opportunity for airlines both on the single-aisle and the widebody side to replace and grow their fleets in the coming five, 10 and 20 years.
Karen Walker: So that's interesting. How are you seeing that—you said demand for both narrowbodies and widebodies—how are you seeing that sort of split for this region and what are the types of aircraft that seem to be most in demand?
Darren Hulst: In the Southeast Asia region, I would say about 80% of the demand will be for single-aisle aircraft, like the 737, primarily because of the continued growth of low-cost airlines. Connectivity, domestically in some big markets—you think about Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, as well as, I think, expansion across the ASEAN region because there's a lot more opportunities for connectivity within the region. And I think that results in the demand on the single-aisle side. Widebody-wise, there is now increased capability with efficient twin-engine aircraft to fly longer distances. So the ability to fly nonstop to Europe, the ability to reach even as far as North America with aircraft like the 787, help airlines expand their networks as well as replace aging fleets from the 1990s and 2000s.
Karen Walker: So certainly, what you said about the low-cost carrier sector is very important in this area, but I think it's interesting that, again, in this area you're seeing that desire to be able to do longer nonstops.
Darren Hulst: I completely see that. I mean, Southeast Asia is relatively more remote from a lot of the world, and those connections are important economically from a trade perspective as well if we think about cargo or freighter aircraft. But also, if you think about it, Southeast Asian destinations from a leisure standpoint are becoming more and more important. You're seeing the interest and the desire to make this a destination. And so having long-haul connectivity just draws more trade, more economic value into the region.
Karen Walker: What about the cargo side?
Darren Hulst: Cargo is incredibly dynamic in this market. If you think about from a global trade perspective, obviously the last 12 months have been dynamic to say the least. One of the things that we've seen is even though we've seen a pivot away from exports directly from China to the United States, the directionality and the speed by which air cargo can ship is remarkable. It's fast, it's reliable and it's also redeployable. And so, we've seen a shift to the European market, for example, but also a significant increase in the supply chain in Southeast Asia—kind of as the next China so to speak. And that has fueled a tremendous amount of air cargo demand to anywhere in the world, but especially North America.
Karen Walker: So you just made a reference to the unpredictable things that have been happening of late. And of course, those all have a direct impact on the airline industry. They're all following this very closely. Of course, it was actually quite interesting that the cargo side actually did quite well last year, despite the tariff situation.
Darren Hulst: So true. I mean if we rewound the tape back to say March or April of last year, nobody would've forecasted that air cargo would actually see a growth on a year-over-year basis. In 2025 to 2024, I think IATA's number just came out, we saw over 3% growth and in fact it accelerated towards the end of the year. And I think it underscores the value of trade, but especially the value of air cargo because even though air cargo grew between 3% and 4% last year, ocean containers and overall global trade, it's just about flat. So air cargo outperforms because of that speed and reliability.
Karen Walker: That's right, yes. I very much saw that. So does all of that give you more, because it's so difficult as we know? I mean in 2019 with all that forecast for the world-record setting 2020 and then what happened, it's very dangerous almost to forecast, but that's your job to forecast. But does this give you more confidence, if you like, in predicting that the demand is still going to be there?
Darren Hulst: It does. I would say one thing that challenges in the market remind us of is how resilient demand for air travel and air cargo is. And we saw that in spades coming out of the pandemic and how fast the market returned to pre-pandemic levels. But last year was just another example of how resilient demand is and how important it is to help connect the world. And I think that's the unique role of commercial aviation.
Karen Walker: So, this region, Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia, again referring to IATA predictions, this is still going to be the fastest-growing market in the world in terms of demand for air travel. We're seeing new routes, new airlines every day. So did you look at the pilot situation, demands and ability to fill those pilot positions?
Darren Hulst: Yes. Part of our outlook or I would say maybe a sister version of our airplane outlook is a look at demand and the requirement for technicians to help support the fleet. And so, our outlook in the Southeast Asia region is in terms of pilots, in terms of aircraft maintenance technicians, and in terms of flight attendants or cabin crew, there's almost 250,000 new employees that are needed to support the growth in this region. So it is truly a growth story that really impacts the whole economy.
Karen Walker: Yeah, that's a big number. That sounds to me like a demand for more training academies and flight simulators.
Darren Hulst: You need the highly trained technical staff, which means you need the training to incorporate that. And so like I said, it's really a broader ecosystem that is needed to help sustain and grow a healthy aviation market.
Karen Walker: Overall. I get the feeling that you feel quite confident and optimistic.
Darren Hulst: I do, especially here in this region. I would say it is a dynamic region. It's a growing region for many different reasons, but in many ways, it still has a little bit of recovery left in it relative to the rest of the world. And so that just gives one more bit of accelerant to the demand here in the near term, especially.
Karen Walker: I think that's probably especially true of China, which was really going fast and then was the slowest to recover. But you're starting to see that change
Darren Hulst: We have. And I think in the China market we've seen a decent amount of recovery, especially in the domestic market. Their next step is really international. But I see even in Southeast Asia, you look at Indonesia, you look at Thailand, and you see still relative room for growth because they're not at the same level of pre-pandemic comparisons as many other countries in the rest of the world. So there's a lot of opportunity for growth. And then on the other side, you see Vietnam, you see other emerging markets that have really stepped ahead over the last few years. So, it's really a dynamic market.
Karen Walker: And then you have India …
Darren Hulst: I know that's adjacent to here is India. They just had an event last week celebrating the aviation market there. And that's another example of really the potential for the region.
Karen Walker: That's great. Absolutely. And so much opportunity there. Darren, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the insights and I look forward to hearing the full briefing as well. And we'll be reporting on that of course. So please follow our dedicated air transport coverage of the show on aviationweek.com, ATW On Location, and of course keep following Window Seat podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. Darren, thank you so much for your time today.
Darren Hulst: My pleasure.
Karen Walker: And thank you also to our producers and of course, thank you to our listeners, this is Karen Walker disembarking from Window Seat.
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