Boeing Co, the world’s second-biggest planemaker, said about 185,600 new pilots will be needed in the Asia-Pacific region within the next two decades as economic growth encourages more people to travel by air.
China will lead growth in the region, with 71,300 pilots in demand through 2030, Boeing said in a statement yesterday.
The region will also need an additional 243,500 technicians in the period, with 99,400 in China, it said.
“Asia is where the growth is,” Bob Bellitto, global sales director for Boeing’s flight services, said at a briefing in Singapore. “We can sell new airplanes, but if we don’t have enough people to maintain them or people to fly them, they’re going to sit on the ground.”
Boeing forecasts demand for pilots and technicians would be the greatest in Asia-Pacific markets as the region would get 12,030 planes of the 34,000 to be delivered in the period. Singapore Airlines Ltd’s (新加坡航空) SilkAir unit and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd (國泰航空) are among carriers that are expanding their fleet.
The global airline industry may post net income of US$3 billion this year, of which US$2 billion is forecast for Asia-Pacific carriers, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Travel demand in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to rise 3.9 percent this year, compared with 2.3 percent in Europe, it said in June.
Europe will get 7,760 planes through 2030, while North America will receive 7,290, Boeing said.
Airbus SAS is the world’s largest maker of airplanes.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained