With over 60,000 GA aircraft being worked on in our system, we’re constantly being asked what trends we see within the US General Aviation (“GA”) market. Contrary to what many people think, GA is a BIG market, with nearly 215,000 active aircraft logging nearly 30 million flight hours per year (and that’s only the United States!).

To put the 30 million flight hours in perspective, the US cargo and passenger air carrier market (scheduled and non-scheduled air carriers) logged 18.4 million flight hours in 2024, the equivalent of only counting GA piston and turboprop hours flown.

What is the makeup of the General Aviation fleet then?

The GA fleet is comprised of over 140,000 active piston powered aircraft, 16,000 jets, nearly 11,000 turboprops, 10,000 helicopters, and over 33,000 experimental (3,000 of which are S-LSA).

One thing to point out is the growing fleet size of experimental aircraft as some of the older certified piston-powered aircraft age out. Currently, the single-engine piston average fleet age is 52.2 years (!) and will continue to climb as older aircraft continue to trade actively in the market and are maintained and flown appropriately.

It appears much of this nearly 20% increase in GA flight hours from 2018 to 2023 was driven by a jump in instructional use, which has nearly doubled from 4 million flight hours in 2014 to over 8 million flight hours in 2023. In fact, instructional hours may soon surpass personal use as the #1 flight hour category for General Aviation.

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From our standpoint, we expect to continue to see the fleet age continue to tick up as older aircraft continue to be maintained, operated, and upgraded. Compared to the price of new aircraft coming off the line at Cessna and Piper, you still can’t beat the value proposition of a used 172 or Cherokee to get started in aviation.

It’s a testament to the professionalism of the maintenance community that these “old birds” are not only airworthy but can also be upgraded (at any time) with all the latest and greatest technology.

To meet this increase in demand, many of our customer have upgraded their processes using our software to help simplify work streams, reduce re-work, manage customers, and reduce the compliance headache.

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