Air passengers in the Middle East are expected to grow by 4.9 per cent and will see an additional 237 million passengers a year on routes to, from and within the region by 2034, Times of Oman cited the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) first 20-year passenger growth forecast. The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will see strong growth of 5.6 per cent, 4.8 per cent, and 4.6 per cent respectively. The total market size will be 383 million passengers, says IATA study. Globally, IATA expects the passenger numbers to reach 7.3 billion by 2034. That represents a 4.1 per cent average annual growth in demand for air connectivity that will result in more than a doubling of the 3.3 billion passengers expected to travel this year. Among the highlights of the report is the expectation that China will overtake the United States as the world's largest passenger market by 2030. Both markets, however, are expected to remain the largest by a wide margin. In 2034 flights to, from and within China will account for some 1.3 billion passengers, 856 million more than 2014 with an average annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent. Traffic to, from and within the US is expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 3.2 per cent that will see 1.2 billion passengers by 2034 (559 million more than 2014). The report, the first from the new IATA Passenger Forecasting service, produced in association with Tourism Economics, analyses passenger flows across 4,000 country pairs for the next 20 years, forecasting passenger numbers by way of three key demand drivers: living standards, population and demographics, and price and availability.