KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 13 (Bernama) - Asian airlines, already the best in the world in terms of service levels, are forging ahead on the back of the continent's growth which would make the civil aviation industry a formidable part of the rise of Asia, Malaysia Airlines Chairman Tan Sri Munir Majid said today.

"For every one per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, you can expect 1.5 per cent of traffic growth.

"The Asian economy is expected to grow 7 per cent this year while growth is expected to be anaemic in America and Europe," he said in the statement today.

Dr Munir also pointed out Asia was starting out from a low base.

"With 10 times the US population size, if Asia was seen as a domestic market its passenger size was only 1.2 times that of the US.

"In terms of international level, while twice the 79 million of the US, this was still behind Europe's 3.8 times," he said.

Overall, only 10 per cent of Asia's population travel "domestically" (US:91 per cent; Europe:21 per cent) while international travel is limited to 4 per cent of the population (US 22 per cent and Europe 41 per cent), he said.

Dr Munir also said Asia has a high propensity to spend and quoted figures from Airbus indicating that real consumer spending growth for the period 2009-2014 was close to and over eight per cent against projected GDP growth of eight and 10 per cent, respectively.

On the number of seats per annum basis, he said nine of the top 20 airports in the world were located in Asia.

"China alone has 158 airports and plans to build 86 more," he added.

- BERNAMA