International airliners are preparing to obtain a greater share of the Asia-Pacific market, especially in China, as the regions are becoming investment hotbeds for the world, said Chinese experts.

"From a global point of view, mutually opening skies and the deregulation of aviation have been the themes of the industry since the 1970s," Huang Wei, an expert with the China School of Aviation Management told China Daily. "The trend has never stopped and the regions have already been involved in it."

She also said alliances between domestic and foreign aviation sectors should be forged to prevent common losses in the industry, which is publicly taken as being fragile, especially when disasters occur.

She summarized that since 1997, consecutive disasters, such as financial crises, terrorist attacks and the spread of epidemics have heavily hit the industry globally.

"Despite that, China and the area around it are attracting foreign aviation competitors," said Huang.

She cited statistics from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as saying that the percentages of passengers from the Asia-Pacific region out of the world's total will climb to 49.8 by 2010, from 36.2 in 1995.

Recently, the ICAO forecast that following a year of decline in 2001 and two successive years of stagnation, world airline passenger traffic is expected to rebound with 4.4 per cent growth in 2004 and to continue to expand at 6.3 per cent in 2005.

In 2001, total (domestic and international) scheduled passenger traffic fell by 2.9 per cent, as a result of a slowing world economy and the events of September 11. These effects continued into 2002 and were intensified during the days leading up to the Iraq War; traffic in that year grew only marginally, by 0.4 per cent.

Traffic fell in the first part of 2003 because of the war and particularly the impact of concerns regarding SARS.

A recovery is now underway, and traffic for 2003 is expected to be about the same as in 2002 on a year-on-year basis.

"It will go up in 2004 and 2005," the ICAO said recently.

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