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In February 2020, PricewaterhouseCoopers released their report on GA contribution to the US Economy. The economic impact of the general aviation industry was measured in terms of employment, labor income, output, and value-added. 2018 was the most recent year for which full, consistent national and state level data was available.
GA directly employed 273,500 full and part-time workers. Including indirect, induced and enabled impacts GA supported 1.2 million jobs and $247 billion in output.
GA generated $77 billion in labor income and contributed $128 billion to US gross domestic product (GDP). At a national level, each direct job in GA supported 3.3 jobs elsewhere in the economy.
References: “Contribution of General Aviation to the US Economy in 2018,” PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, February 2020.
In 2018, total General Aviation flight hours were 25.5 million. PricewaterhouseCoopers divided GA flight hours into four categories: Personal, Business without a Paid Crew; Business with a Paid Professional Crew and Other.
Personal: Included operation of GA aircraft for personal and recreational reasons. The pilots of personal-use aircraft are typically the owner and PWC assumed that owners tie-down their aircraft rather than rent hangar space (which under estimates the economic impact of personal-use GA aircraft because many owners rent hangar space). About 7.7 million or 30% of GA flight hours were for personal flight.
Business without Paid Crew: Typically flown by the owner of the aircraft who is not paid for flight operations. It’s assumed that owners rent space in a shared hangar and pay business insurance rates on the aircraft.
Business with Paid Professional Crew: Owners of such aircraft are assumed by PWC to rent a hangar, pay a lower business insurance rate, and hire professional pilot and flight crew. Air taxi and air medical services are assumed to have this cost profile. About 31% or 7.8 million GA hours were for business purposes. Business-use with a paid crew accounts for the majority (79%) of turboprop and jet-powered airplane hours.
Other: Included flight instruction, aerial applications in agriculture and other industries, aerial observation, and sight-seeing. It’s assumed “other-use” aircraft operate with a paid pilot but no paid crew. This large grouping included about 10 million hours or 39% of all GA flight hours. And, represented the majority (61%) of flight hours for rotorcraft.
Table 1: GA Hours by Aircraft Type and Reason in 2018
| Personal | Bus. w/o Paid Crew | Bus. w/ Paid Crew | Other | Hours | |
| Piston Airplanes | 5,790 | 1,103 | 551 | 6,342 | 13,786 |
| Turboprop | 219 | 192 | 1,176 | 1,149 | 2,736 |
| Jet-Powered | 459 | 230 | 3,582 | 321 | 4,592 |
| Helicopters | 88 | 29 | 847 | 1,929 | 2,922 |
| Experimental | 1,071 | 67 | 13 | 187 | 1,339 |
| Other | 77 | 29 | 1 | 54 | 131 |
| Total | 7,704 | 1,649 | 6,171 | 9,982 | 25,506 |
PricewaterhouseCoopers was engaged by the general aviation industry trade associations to help quantify the contribution of GA to the United States economy. PWC defined General Aviation as the manufacture and operation of any type of aircraft issued an airworthiness certificate by the FAA, excluding military operations and scheduled commercial airlines.
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In 2018, total General Aviation flight hours were 25.5 million (25,500,000). Piston-engine flight hours were over 15 million hours or 59% of the total GA flight hours.
PricewaterhouseCoopers was engaged by the general aviation industry trade associations to help quantify the contribution of GA to the United States economy. PWC defined General Aviation as the manufacture and operation of any type of aircraft issued an airworthiness certificate by the FAA, excluding military operations and scheduled commercial airlines.
Table 1. Hours by Aircraft Type
| Description | Hours | Percent |
| Single-Engine Piston | 12,092,000 | 47% |
| Twin-Engine Piston | 1,694,000 | 7% |
| Turboprop | 2,736,000 | 11% |
| Jet-Powered | 4,592,000 | 18% |
| Helicopters | 2,922,000 | 11% |
| Experimental | 1,339,000 | 5% |
| Other | 131,000 | 1% |
| Total | 25,506,000 | 100% |
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Connecting Aviators® and related marks and logos are property of wikiWings®
Over the next several weeks, we’ll blog a few factoids from the PricewaterhouseCoopers General Aviation report that was released in early 2020. Let’s start with, how many GA aircraft are there in the US? Answer: In 2018, the total GA fleet size was 211,743 aircraft. More than 173,000 had piston engine propulsion which represented 82% of the GA fleet.
TABLE 1. US General Aviation Fleet Size by Type Aircraft, 2018
| Single-Engine Piston | 130,180 | 61% |
| Twin-Engine Piston | 12,860 | 6% |
| Turboprop | 9,924 | 5% |
| Jet-Powered | 14,595 | 7% |
| Helicopters | 9,988 | 5% |
| Experimental | 30,084 | 14% |
| Other | 4,112 | 2% |
| Total | 211,743 | 100% |
PricewaterhouseCoopers was engaged by the general aviation industry trade associations to help quantify the contribution of GA to the United States economy. PWC defined General Aviation as the manufacture and operation of any type of aircraft issued an airworthiness certificate by the FAA, excluding military operations and scheduled commercial airlines.
Copyright 2020 wikiWings LLC, All rights reserved
Connecting Aviators® and related marks and logos are property of wikiWings®
