World air traffic is expected to triple over the next 20 years driven by the strong growth in developing countries such as China and India, Airbus executives say.

At a presentation in Sydney ahead of the double-decker A380's arrival on June 6, Laurent Rouaud, Airbus vice-president for market forecasts, said revenue passenger kilometres per year were expected to triple from 4 trillion in 2005 to more than 10 trillion in 2025.

He said this would be driven by a continued increase in traffic between the major air hubs such as London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Los Angeles, New York, Beijing, Shanghai, Dubai and Sydney.

Mr Rouaud said strong growth levels in emerging countries such as China and India, and those in the Middle East and the former Eastern bloc countries, would drive an increase in traffic as the propensity to use air travel rose with economic growth.

He said this would mean demand for new passenger aircraft would more than double from 12,676 in 2005 to 27,307 in 2025.

Passenger traffic in the Asia-Pacific region had risen by 51 per cent since 2000, driven by a 141 per cent increase in traffic in China and a 110 per cent growth in traffic in India.

This had helped drive the total increase in world passenger traffic by 28 per cent over levels in 2000, he said.

He predicted that outbound tourism from China would be the fastest international air travel market in the world over the next decade. It is expected to grow by more than 10 times over the next 10 years.

By 2025 Asia would represent 32 per cent of world air traffic compared with 26 per cent today while the North American share of the total market would shrink to 25 per cent from 31 per cent.

Mr Rouaud said total air traffic into and out of Australia would grow by an average of 4.7 per cent a year from 2006 to 2015 with the biggest growth area coming between Australia and the Middle East, which would be growing at 7.9 per cent a year.

Mr Rouaud said there would be little relief in sight from the current regime of crowded aircraft.

He said load factors between Australia and Europe had jumped from 70 per cent in 2001 to over 80 per cent, while load factors between North America and the Asia-Pacific region were up to almost 85 per cent.

He said many airlines were now consistently overbooking flights. It would be difficult to push load factors too much higher, and he did not see the situation easing off.

Airbus is predicting that the Asia-Pacific region will need over 560 aircraft worth some US$76 billion between now and 2025.

Singapore Airlines will be the first airline to take delivery of the A380 in October this year after a two-year delay in the aircraft's production.

Qantas is not getting its first delivery until August next year.

Airbus executives would not say how many aircraft they had to sell to break even.