CRI听力:Attendees of the Singapore Airshow Express Confidence in the Asian Market

Boeing, Airbus, and Honeywell are among the dozens of major international airline companies at this year's Singapore Air Show.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China - also known as COMAC - considered a bellwether of the country's commercial airline industry - is also among the attendees.

COMAC's C919 airliner has become a major competitor in the Asia Pacific region. The company has also received hundreds of orders from regional carriers for its new ARJ21-700, the first of which were delivered last year.

The company's director, Zhao Bin, says there is room for significant growth in the Asian airline market.

"According to our prediction, Asia will lead the world in terms of the speed of yearly development in the airline industry. We have made contacts with Indonesia and lots of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. As their economies keep developing, these markets will keep thriving."

China and the wider Asia Pacific region have increasingly been attracting the attention of major airline companies all over the world.

Honeywell has seen a huge increase in the volume of business it conducts in the region since moving its Asia-Pacific headquarters from Singapore to Shanghai in 2007.

Paul Nef is Honeywell's Director of Business Development.

"China has vast lands and a huge population, and two thirds of them have never traveled by plane which makes the room for growth quite big. I predict that the growth speed will not stop nor slow down but increase. All the big cities in China all have airliners and airports, but that is not the case in most medium sized cities. However these medium sized cities in China are actually quite large compared to cities in other countries. As a result, there is still a need for development and also potential room for growth."

During this year's airshow, China's Okay Airways signed a commitment for 12 Boeing 737 jets with the total deal worth 1.3 billion U.S. dollars at list prices.

In the meantime, the Chinese market for plane maintenance is also seen as having huge prospects.

A repair network has been established with over 160 stations in and outside of China. It's a joint venture between Air China and Lufthansa, called Ameco Beijing.

Ameco Beijing COO Andreas Meisel explains what's driving the expansion of the company.

"You'll still have to see that China is a little bit different form the rest of Asia. Of all that China's very fast growing, we have a middle class growing in China and you are a Chinese, you should have known better than I do. You have a middle class growing, people are getting wealthy and the people really like to fly. So they are flying around the world, within China and they want to fly to Europe, to the US and to the rest of Asia. You have a growing economy and growing passenger numbers in China so we need a growing number of aircraft in China. So with more aircraft in China, you need more Ameco and this specific in China is that we are building up also inside China more Ameco capabilities."

On the first day of the event, Airbus delivered a forecast on the development of the Asian market.

It predicts that air passenger transportation will maintain a yearly increase of over 5 percent in the next 20 years, and around 12,800 new planes will be needed - representing 40 percent of demand for new planes globally during the same years.

For CRI, this is Niu Honglin.