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The ton-kilometre performed as a measure of world air traffic grew 6.1 per cent annually during the last three decades despite many impediments during this period, such as the Asian financial crisis, severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, wars in the Middle East and many security-related events. Although all of the world's regions are experiencing fast growth, the aviation traffic pattern varies by region. However, the traffic growth led to more demand for aviation fuel. World aviation oil demand was 1.18 mb/d in 1971. It experienced an annual growth rate of 2.9 per cent, 0.2 per cent ahead of the transportation sector growth rate, and reaching 4.9 mb/d in 2006. With this consumption level, the aviation sector is the second major consumer with an 11.2 per cent share in total oil demand in the transportation sector. The aviation sector burns about 5.8 per cent of total oil consumed in the world. Technology improvement and better load management among other factors caused ongoing improvement in energy efficiency. Regional econometric modelling showed that aviation fuel demand is inelastic to aviation fuel prices despite their inverse impacts on financial balances of individual airliners. The fuel demand is highly responsive to aviation traffic that in turn is mainly a function of economic growth. Elasticises of fuel demand and aviation traffic confirmed the continuation of the ongoing energy intensity decline in the aviation sector by all the regions of the world. In the reference case, aviation incremental fuel demand will be 2.7 mb/d in 2030, which would leave aviation demand at 7.8 mb/d in the same year. Most of the incremental demand, i.e. 0.75 mb/d, will be contributed by China. Copyright 2010 The Author. Journal compilation 2010 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.