Flight Friday: Small Jets, Turboprops Lead Business Aviation Recovery

With the upcoming NBAA event Oct. 22-24, this week’s Flight Friday looks at the recovery and sustained post-pandemic utilization levels within the business aviation sector.

Business aviation has been a rare silver lining for the aviation industry, post-pandemic. With well-documented issues for traveling by commercial passenger aircraft in 2020, certain people—who had the means and need to travel, especially in the domestic U.S.—turned to business aviation to fill their needs. The business aviation market is dominated by the North American market, with North American operators accounting for almost 71% of flights through the first three-quarters of 2024.

After the pandemic outbreak, the smaller aircraft picked up their utilization rapidly, and by the end of 2020, the sector’s small jets and turboprops had returned to utilization that was at or above the equivalent month in 2019. Small jet and multi-engine turboprop utilization continued to grow through to the end of 2022, before slightly softening, and plateauing during 2023. Multi-engine turboprop utilization has seen some continued softening in 2024, with few deliveries and an aging fleet that is starting to retire; 16% of 2024 retirements so far have been multi-engine turboprops.

In the first half of 2024, small jet utilization is up 20% on 2019 levels, but there has been a little softening over the northern hemisphere summer months down to 15%; after summer vacations have concluded the utilization is picking up.

Single-engine turboprops continue to go from strength to strength. The utilization in this segment has been almost 50% greater than the equivalent month in 2019 and remains at nearly 40% above 2019 levels. This is, in part, due to the continued delivery of these aircraft, which offer lower operating costs and can fill in most of the roles that the legacy multi-engine turboprops and small jets can do.

Medium and large jets recovery reflect the small jets, but with a time lag. It was March 2021 before the medium jets returned to equivalent 2019 utilization, as countries slowly started removing travel restrictions and longer flights were required. The large jets took until June 2021 to return to 100% levels. Again, both segments peaked, softened, and then plateaued. Medium jets are still 25% higher than 2019, with the large jets almost 15% higher, helped by the introduction of the Gulfstream G700, and continued delivery of the larger business jets.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization tool.