AerCap CEO Aengus says a big reason for the A330-300 rise is that carriers are using it as a short-haul aircraft in Asia, finding it useful to upgrade to a smaller widebodies in emerging markets that do not have enough airport capacity to add flights to meet growing demand.

Similarly, Air Lease sees China and other parts of Asia as a booming market for new narrowbodies.

Air Lease has placed 53 single-aisle aircraft with Air China, China Eastern and China Southern as replacements for Boeing 737 Classics or first-generation A320s.

Udvar-Hazy says Air Lease is seeing the same tendencies in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia, where airlines are looking to replace aircraft built in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Even with economic growth slowing, he says, “we’re seeing a giant replacement market that will actually build momentum as we go into the later part of this decade.”