John Leahy, the Airbus Chief Operating Officer said that the company feels very optimistic about the recovery of the airline industry. However, he also pointed out that the financing conditions will remain very tight for a while longer. Airbus said that airlines will buy about 25,000 planes over the next 20 years. This is worth about $3.1 trillion.

Right now the figures for the purchase of new aircraft between 2009 and 2029 is up from the 24,262 planes that were forecast between the years 2007 and 2027. Airbus goes on to predict that the passenger numbers will fall by 2 percent this year, but could rise as much as 4.6 percent next year. John Leahy said that recessions have a beginning, a middle and an end. Right now he thinks that we are in the middle.

Leahy went on to say that they are seeing the recovery starting, but there are still a lot of problems on the horizon. This is mostly due to the weaker financial conditions of the airline industry. However, Airbus was happy to point out that there has been no new surge in cancellations and the company may still be able to reach its target by the end of the year.

31 percent of the new aircrafts being made are accounted for by the Asia Pacific region. The top airlines that are grabbing up these new planes are carriers in India and China. Next in line would be Europe, which is contributing to about 25 percent of the sales, and North America is in third with about 23 percent of all the sales.