General Aviation is defined as all aviation other than military and scheduled commercial airlines. The 2020, General Aviation Manufacturers Association fiftieth anniversary report contains a number of GA factoids. For example,
GA includes over 440,000 aircraft flying worldwide today, ranging from two-seat training and utility helicopters to transcontinental business jets, of which 211,000 aircraft are based in the United States and over 133,000 in Europe.
GA supports $247 billion in total economic output and 1.2 million total jobs in the United States.
National Aviation Day is August 19th in the United States to celebrate the development of aviation. The holiday was established in 1939 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt by the writing of a Presidential proclamation which declared the anniversary of Orville Wright’s birthday to be National Aviation Day.
Orville Wright was born on August 19, 1871 and was still alive when the proclamation was first issued. We encourage pilots to observe this week with activities that promote interest in aviation.
GAMA annual report included a section on fractional ownership, and JetNet LLC was the source for the statistics. JetNet’s business model appears to be focused on turbine and helicopter markets. They reported the turbine airplane fleet reached 38,448 and helicopters 31,839 respectively worldwide in 2019. JetNet tracks fractional ownership and but only recorded 860 fractional aircraft ownerships in 2019. The GAMA fractional report implies it’s representative of the entire GA fleet.
Fractional Aircraft and Share Owners 2019
Description
2019
Fractional Aircraft
860
Fractional Share Owners
3,867
Source: JetNet LLC
Our hypothesis is the total number of fractional aircraft and fractional share owners in the U.S. and worldwide is unknown. JetNet’s stats imply an average of only 17 fractional aircraft per state in the United States and even less if the assumption is worldwide. Logically, JetNet’s fractional numbers are too low and the reporting is incomplete to be representative of the entire market. The U.S. general aviation fleet has more than 211,000 aircraft.
GAMA and JetNet should clarify how their reported records on 860 fractional aircraft relate to the total U.S. and worldwide general aviation fleet.
U.S. General Aviation Fleet by Aircraft Type
2018
Single-Engine Piston Airplanes
130,180
Twin-Engine Piston Airplanes
12,860
Turboprop Airplanes
9,924
Jet Powered Airplanes
14,595
Helicopters
9,988
Experimental
30,084
Other aircraft
4,112
Total
211,743
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Contribution of GA to U.S. Economy 2018, February 19, 2020
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