2024 Fractional Jet Activity At Record Levels

The fractional fleets in North America posted record levels of activity in 2024, based on data from WINGX. Last year was the first ever year in which fractional jet ownership, as a category, saw the most North American departures – more than corporate flight departments, charter or aircraft management companies. What’s more the fractional operators continue to add aircraft and to work their aircraft very hard, putting far more flight hours on each plane than any other operator type.

Record Fractional Departures

The graph and data from WINGX, below, very clearly show that 2024 was the year of the fractional operator in the North America. The fractional fleets – shown by the light blue dotted line - posted record levels of activity as measured by departures, when compared to the preceeding years back to 2019.

Over two thirds of fractional activity was flown by NetJets, 2nd ranked Flexjet captured a quarter of market share. Several fractional operators, notably Flexjet, PlaneSense and AirSprint, saw triple digital growth compared to 2019.

In contrast to the booming fractional activity, corporate flight departments (the dark blue line above) flew 11% fewer flights compared to 2023, with the active number of aircraft tails falling 7% compared to 2023 (see the fleet sizes section below). Private flying rose over 10% compared to 2023, although the average hours per tails fell 1% compared to 2023.

The actual departure numbers by these five largest operator types, over the last six years, 2019 to 2024 is shown in the tables below. For the first time fractional ownership operators flew more departures, 578,835, than corporate flight departments (533,104 departures) and more than aircraft management companies (516,769 departures), charter operators (420,182 departures) or private flight departments (394,877 departures).

The relative growth of these categories really stands out when you look at the data indexed to (pre-covid) 2019 - the right hand table above. The fractional jet departures are up 63% since 2019, as highlighted in the red box. The only category of operator to have seen a drop in flight departures over this period is corporate flight departments, which only did 84% of the departures they flew in 2019.

Fractional Fleet Growth

The WINGX data shows the fractional jet fleet size has continued to grow substantially in 2024, as the fractional operators add aircraft to their fleets. In 2024 there were 1,241 business jets in the North American fractional fleets, an increase of 46 compared to 2023, and an increase of 265 (27%) since the 2019 pre-covid fleet size. These still only represent about 6% of the overall business jets in North America.

The number of jets in corporate flight departments has been dropping over the last few years. There were 6,590 aircraft in 2021, up from 6,395 in 2019, but this is now down to 5,742. There is probably some movement here from corporate flight departments to fractional ownership, driven by a variety of factors.

The operator sector with the largest growth over this period is private flights, where the number of jets has grown to 5,720 in 2024, up 38% from 4,138 in 2019.

Note the above chart shows the analysis for the five largest sectors, totaling 20,352 jets in 2024. These represent 91% of the overall business jets. The other smaller categories, which make up the remaining 9%, include aircraft in ambulance/medical, cargo/logistics, government/military, OEM, shuttle and training.

Aircraft Hours Flown

The fractional operators continue to work their aircraft very hard - some would say very efficiently - compared to other operator types. As we've seen above the fractional jets flew the most departures in 2024, but the aircraft only represent about 6% of all the business jets. The graph and data below shows that in 2024 a typical fractional jet would fly an average of 74 hours each month (the top light blue line in the graph), or almost 900 hours a year. This is more than double any other operator type.

The branded charter operators come closest to the fractional operators, but on average these charter jets flew 33 hours per month, or about 400 hours per year. In comparison private flyers use their jet for just 13 hours a month, equivalent to 156 hours a year.

The tables above also show how hard all these aircraft were being used during the peak of covid induced demand in 2021 and 2022. Nearly all sectors, except for corporate flight departments, were utilizing their aircraft much more to meet this demand. But as demand has subdued a little, and as overall fleets have grown, the hours flown per aircraft, has also dropped, but is still above pre-covid levels.