Gulfstream's G550 recently completed its one millionth landing
Hot on the heels of the recent Aviation Week business aviation webinar in which our independent outlook of how the market will evolve over the next 10 years was presented, today’s Flight Friday delves into business aviation utilization.
Business aviation, along with the commercial cargo market, was one of the silver linings to the COVID pandemic. Due to limited commercial flights that were not entirely reliable, some people who could afford it and who needed to travel did so using business aviation.
Smaller aircraft post-outbreak were the first to return to 2019 monthly flight hours. By August/September 2020 the single-engine turboprops, multi-engine turboprops, and the small jets returned to 2019 equivalent month utilization or greater. These three segments continued to gain flight time, eventually reaching almost 40% more flight time in April 2022 compared to April 2019.
The market has subsequently calmed down and softened slightly, with the single-engine turboprop and small jets remaining 20-30% higher than the equivalent month in 2019. The multi-engine turboprop utilization has dropped to 10% greater than the 2019 equivalent, due to the nature of an aging fleet that is slowly being retired, compounded by only a small number of new builds entering the market.
Medium and large jets took longer to recover, due to the nature of their operations, which are generally more internationally focused rather than domestic. The medium jet recovered to 2019 levels in March 2021, as COVID vaccines were administered and countries started to open, albeit with some travel restrictions or testing. Recently, the medium jets are almost 20% higher than 2019, helped in part due to the increased fleet size.
Large jets had to wait the longest to return to 2019 levels, eventually getting there in July 2021. The segment remains at 10% higher levels than 2019, with impacts from the Russia war on Ukraine not helping this sector as there were some Russian individuals and companies that had aircraft in this segment.
This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization tool.
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