New Business Jets

Following chart shows the turnover by manufacturers. One of the most important pattern sells was the following: Whilst there was an upturn in the number of new jets on sale, the overall value of business aircraft selling fell 3.9% to $18.0 billion in 2017 from a slightly overhauled $18.7 billion in 2016.

reflecting the aircraft mixture, with rising revenues from (lower cost) lighter jets such as the Honda Jet and the new Cirrus Vision SF50, but lower volumes of larger medium and heavier jets, particularly at Bombardier. With almost 63 business jets, North America is by far the biggest business jet segment.

The next is Europe, with a 2017 share of around 17%. Boeing has been a leader for several years in the very large segment in which Airbus and Boeing are converting their passenger aircraft for personal use. The year 2017 was the first year since 2004 in which Airbus did not sell any of its company jets.

According to GAMA (based on the latest 2016 FAA poll and forecasts ), the overall number of business jets in service in the U.S. is 13,751 and is expected to rise to 17,345 by 2026. Out of these 1,639 in all, 1,639 are personally, 7,475 are used for business purposes (FAR part 91), 2,093 are partly 135 charters and the remainder have a wide range of uses.

By way of contrast, FAR Part 135 contains 1,559 turbo-props and 1,777 piston-engined levels. Global deliveries of new turbo-prop aircraft fell by 3.3% from 582 in 2016 to 563 in 2017. Reported costs for turbo-props were $1,490 million, an equivalent of an aircraft averaging $2.65 million. Three of the best-selling new turbo-props were the Pilatus P2-12 with 85 cars, the Cessna Grand Caravan with 59 cars and the King Air 350 with 45 cars.

3 percent from (a revised) 1,142 in 2016 to 1,185 in 2017. Reciprocating aircraft transactions were valued at $718 million, an approximate $605,000 per aircraft transaction. The number of current flyers at the end of 2017 was 609,306, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

FAA has slightly altered the way it has identified allowances that are still in use, so that the information is not directly similar to previous years. Business aircraft flew an annual 280 hour flight hour rate (2016 figures), while turbine prop use averaged 277 hour flight hour rate (2016 figures). In 2016, the overall flight time of all US business jets (latest data) amounted to 3.8 million flight/hour.

FAA forecasts that this will rise to over 5 million by 2020 and over 6 million by 2026. This compares to the 2.7 million flight times of US turbo-props over the entire projection horizon, which is almost unchanged. Jets recorded in the USA were 15 years old on average.

Compared to this, single-engine turbo-props averages 13. 2-years and multi-engine turbo-props on avarage 28. GAMA's full 2017 Annual Report is available on the GAMA website.