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Medium-sized aircraft will dominate China's aviation market in the coming years, Randolph Baseler, a Boeing senior executive in charge of commercial aircraft marketing, said here recently.

An increasingly competitive marketplace is driving airlines to provide passengers with what they want, which means more non-stop and more frequent flights, Baseler said.

China's civil aviation business will triple in the next 20 years, and China will become the world's largest commercial aviation market next to the United States, Boeing predicts.

To satisfy the significant growth, China's airlines will require an additional 1,912 airplanes, mostly in the single aisle and twin aisle categories, with just a small number of very large airplanes.

China's international air travel market has increased more than five times in the last ten years, with the growth going to frequency, with a tripling of non-stop flights, Baseler said, expecting this pattern to continue into the future.

China to Europe aviation service will grow at all major hubs, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, with a more than doubling of air travel growth. The largest amount of frequency growth will be driven by mid-sized twin-aisle airplanes, Baseler predicted.

The China to North America market will also see the use of mid-sized twin-aisle airplanes to and from all major Chinese mainland cities fueling frequency growth and new non-stop services.

At present, there are only 17 direct flights between China and North America, but Boeing forecasts that by 2021, the number will more than double to 35 with a potential of significantly more.

Possible candidates for new non-stop routes between China and North America are China's Chongqing, Chengdu, Shenyang, Wuhan, and Xi'an cities.

By 2021, China's fleet will more than triple in size to around 2,300 units, based on an annual growth rate of 7.6 percent in passenger air travel. In this sense, some older airplanes will retire, he added.