Leasing companies are boosting their fleet and expanding across Asia as the region is set to overtake the United States as the world's largest plane market, spurred by demand from China, India and Southeast Asia.

Last month, China said it would encourage its lessors to look for opportunities overseas and yesterday Cheung Kong (Holdings) said it submitted a preliminary proposal for some planes of Awas Aviation Capital.

Even with the overseas expansion, most of China Aircraft Leasing's business would continue to come from its home market, Yu said.

The company, which counts Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines among its customers, has said it has a 3.1 per cent share of the business in the country.

"We will continue to focus on China," Yu said.

The company's shares yesterday rose as much as 3.36 per cent to HK$5.53 before ending at HK$5.43, up 1.5 per cent.

China Aircraft Leasing last month sold HK$728.9 million of shares at HK$5.53 each in its initial public offering.

The sale was "more to help us reduce borrowing costs as we start to look towards other parts of Asia", Yu said.

China Aircraft Leasing had 32 planes in service with an average fleet age of 3.3 years as of the end of last year. The company aims to expand the fleet to 40 by the end of this year and to 64 by the end of 2016, according to its listing prospectus.

Air travel demand in Asia is projected to expand 5.7 per cent in the four years to 2017, the second fastest pace in the world, with routes within or connected to the mainland being the single largest driver, according to an International Air Transport Association's study last year.

Asia would push commercial aircraft sales to US$5.2 trillion over the next 20 years as China overtook the US as the world's largest aviation market, Boeing said last month.