The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation. Boeing is raising its 20-year prediction for worldwide airplane sales to 34,000 jets, enough to double the size of the world's fleet, as more people travel in China, India, and other emerging markets.
 
 The airplane maker and defense contractor predicted on July 3 that $4.5 trillion worth of planes will be sold. It will have to compete with Airbus and other competitors including Bombardier, Embraer, and China's state-owned COMAC for those sales.
 
 The projection is 500 planes higher and a half-trillion dollars more expensive than the previous year's estimate. Boeing expects airlines to shift toward slightly larger planes with higher price tags, accounting for most of the additional spending.
 
 The world's airlines fly almost 20,000 planes today. That number is expected to rise to almost 40,000 by 2031, Boeing said. Boeing and Airbus are both speeding up production to meet a growing order backlog. Airbus, based in France, announced on Monday that it will begin assembling A320s in Alabama, with deliveries to begin in 2016. Boeing is speeding up production of its competing 737.
 
 Boeing said the Asia Pacific region will be the biggest market for new planes, with a potential for 12,030 aircraft there through 2031. The next biggest market is Europe with 7,760, and North America with 7,290.
 
 Tinseth said low-cost airlines are stimulating demand for air travel. Those airlines have been especially important in Asia, because they're making air travel affordable for people who previously didn't fly. Boeing predicted that global airline image traffic will grow five per cent a year for the next two decades.
 
 Boeing predicted that more than 23,000 of the 34,000 planes that will be sold will be single-aisle planes such as its 737 and the competing Airbus A320. It also predicted sales of 7,950 larger planes such as its new 787. Sales of each would total around $2 trillion, because the bigger planes cost more.