The major beneficiaries of this week’s frenetic (public relations) activity just outside Paris live half a world away. They are Asia’s emerging travellers – the millions that have never stepped inside an aircraft, but for whom air travel is becoming attainable. That opportunity took a major step forward as Asian carriers – many of whom the world had never heard of a decade or even five years ago – stepped up in front of the world’s media to order narrowbodies for the mass markets they see blossoming at home.