Podcast: Data Dive Into BizAv Q2 Deliveries, Utilization & More

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Molly McMillin: Hello and welcome to today's episode of our BCA podcast where we take a dive into how the business aviation industry is performing. Specifically we'll take a look at the second quarter of 2025 and the first half. Now that the first half of the year is behind us, we'll take a look at the critical market trends, including deliveries, aircraft utilization, and other results. And there might be a couple of surprises in store as well. So I'm Molly McMillin, Aviation Week's managing editor for Business Aviation. With me today, I'm happy to introduce expert and analyst Brian Kough, Aviation Week's senior director of forecasts and aerospace insights. Brian, by the way, is also a commercial rated pilot with multi-engine instrument and small UAS certifications. So, hey Brian, welcome to the program.

Brian Kough: Hey Molly, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Molly McMillin: Yes, we're happy to have you. We might start off by saying The Aviation Week Intelligence Network or AWIN performs business aviation quarterly market analysis, and the full report's available exclusively to AWIN members, but Brian's going to give us a good overview of what's been happening in the data world. So Brian, talk about deliveries for a minute, if you would, second quarter and first half, what were they like for business jets and for turboprops?

Brian Kough: Yeah, pretty good year, Molly, or year quarter, I should say. Like you said, 277 jets and turboprops delivered during that period. We can get into some comparisons, which I love to do, being data, data adolescent and whatnot, how that compared previously. But yeah, 277 down actually from the second quarter of 2024 if you compare those, but those are mostly driven by a lower than expected turboprop deliveries taking place in. Again, that's the second quarter, and we've seen that for a couple of quarters now. When you take a look at the first half numbers, especially the multi-engine delivery values are much lower. The King Airs,

Molly McMillin: And we'll go back to that, but business jet deliveries were actually up in the quarter, right?

Brian Kough: Yeah. We've got many ways to skin the cat. So for the first half of 2025, we delivered quite a few aircraft, 492, so good delivery numbers, good solid delivery numbers across the board with the exception of that. The weakness in the turboprop category we track, maybe that helps a little bit too, is we track aircraft deliveries from ACJs, BBJs, all the way down to some of the smaller business type turboprops all the way into the PC-46. So just to give a little context, then we break those out for different types of analysis by large, medium, and small jets in the different categories of turboprops.

Molly McMillin: In the second quarter, it looks like business jet deliveries were actually up 6%, is that right?

Brian Kough: Yes, yes. They were. So overall, but as you dive into those numbers a little bit, getting in, cracking the code on it so to speak, large jets were down. Again, this is just a comparison with the second quarter of last year in 2024, but yeah, up 6% overall, but large jets were down 8%, medium jets, so the Phenom 300s, that Challenger 350 were up 31%, so good on them there. Small jets just a tick 1% higher than the previous quarter. So a really good second quarter for the medium-sized jets. Looking at it from a first half perspective, they were up 9% versus the first half of 2024. So yeah, still good numbers for 2025.

Molly McMillin: Right now. Let's talk about turboprops. You mentioned when we were chatting before we started that this was a surprise to you in the results of that one. Can you talk a little bit about specifics on single-engine or multi-engine?

Brian Kough: Sure. Just looking at, well, just the numbers first, maybe looking at the second quarter performance, we delivered seven multi-engine turboprops as a market worldwide and 68 single-engine turboprops for second quarter. So that's actually down 26% against a quarter-on-quarter performance looking at the first half. Similar for multi-engine down 52% single engines are on par, which the whole category is down 8% then. But it's really proving to me is really the operating costs of the single-engine turboprop with similar capabilities to the multi-engine. It's just simply less expensive to operate with similar capabilities. So really proving that concept in that category.

Molly McMillin: Interesting. When you look at deliveries by manufacturer, were there any surprises there?

Brian Kough: Yeah, by manufacturer, aircraft deliveries kind of taken a look back. Second quarter performance Textron of course is in lead with both Cessna and Beechcraft product, they've put out the door 78 aircraft, so by far the lead manufacturer, Pilatus, so we talked about the single-engine turboprop category, 26, Bombardier 34 aircraft out the door, Gulfstream with a similar 33 aircraft and Embraer with 37, and Piper still chugging along with 13 PA-46s out the door. So yeah, some strong second quarter performance, but we've got that kind of last month, last quarter to come in the year, and that's how it was a banner year for delivery. So anticipating a similar big push to get those aircraft on the books for revenue purposes for those manufacturers,

Molly McMillin: I was noticing it looked like deliveries were fairly steady in the second quarter of 25 compared to 24, except that Embraer jumped from 27 a year ago to 37 deliveries in the second quarter. And Pilatus, you mentioned Pilatus, they're down by about 11, so otherwise it looked like pretty steady movement on just about everyone else.

Brian Kough: Yeah, that's a good point. With Embraer up 10 more aircraft on quarter-on-quarter performance and Pilatus down 11, so kind of carrying on that turboprop weakness, manufacturers are still not immune to all the parts shortages as well that the rest of the community's feeling, especially on the MRO side. So that could have issues as well as just workforce. We talk on these all the time about workforce and supply chain issues, so sometimes you just don't, they're not publicly known, but that could have some impacts as well.

Molly McMillin: I always remember one of the manufacturers saying, supply chain's getting better, but you still need all the parts to get an airplane out the door, so right. You need them all.

Brian Kough: A hundred percent.

Molly McMillin: If there's just one that's lacking, you can't deliver it.

Brian Kough: Exactly.

Molly McMillin: Can you talk a little bit about utilization? What's happening there, Brian?

Brian Kough: Yeah, yeah, good. Still positive with some differentiation as you kind of drill into the data. Leaving out of 2024, we had a really positive year, not like the boom times post-pandemic, but North America being the largest market, 65, 66% of the fleet was 0.3%. So not a lot, but we've got a lot of airplanes flying, so that's a lot of hours, extra hours. Latin America was really a surprise at the end of 2024, 14% Europe, about 12% and so forth. But getting into some of the current numbers that we've seen out of the second quarter, and you can take a couple of different ways of looking at it by top operators or segmenting by operator classes, things like that to try to tease some interesting data out of that. But looking at the last three months, the second quarter corporate was up almost one and a half percent corporate flying.

So kind of a surprise there with some of the pressures you've seen in the past over kind of rejecting corporate travel. But the hours and actually the fleet strengths are saying a different thing. The other highlight is fractional operators, huge increase in fleets from their base perspective, they're up 0.7% for the second quarter, charters up a percent, but the nuance is private flying, so private individuals was down a little over half a percent for the second quarter. Kind of the same when you're looking at the first half corporates up just under a percent fractionals up 0.75%, charter up 0.88% and private flying just a little bit lower. So some interesting numbers when you tease that out, and these are averages. So we've kind of taken out the acquisition of new aircraft as far as an aggregate value. So just looking at what the average aircraft in that category is flying.

Molly McMillin: I see. I was really surprised when you compared those categories to 2019. Like fractional is in a huge amount.

Brian Kough: Yeah, it sure is. Their fleet strength is huge, but just the aggregate hours fractional is really the big story, right up 56% going back to the January of 2020, 56%, but they started out with about 880 aircraft. They're now up to 1,380 aircraft in the fractional fleets. So big fleet change. So on our 56% corporate flying on the fleet side is up 10%, charter's up five and private is up 19%. So really seeing on the private side, we hear the stories of the younger generation buying aircraft to use in their business or personal needs, and so that it's really reflected in that 19% increase in fleet strength. So we've grown that segment post-pandemic, and there's a lot of stickiness here. We're seeing it in the numbers that business flying or private flying has really stuck, so we haven't reverted back to the mean, so to speak.

Molly McMillin: I think there was some question after the pandemic when so many people were getting into it and then first-time users and buyers, whether they would stick around once the airlines came back and got better. But it's a testament to, sounds like they for the most part are.

Brian Kough: In a lot of ways you look at the numbers, it certainly is the stickiness factor is there, the privacy operating in a private setting is all helpful to the case for folks that need those kind of attributes to get from one spot to the other or inaccessible areas as well as we've seen around the world. We just don't have commercial operations in many of the places, so people need to go. So it's always helpful to have that business aviation airstrip in your backyard. I wish I had one myself personally.

Molly McMillin: You too, Brian.

Brian Kough: Yeah.

Molly McMillin: So what's the strongest part of the world? I say that as you're getting ready to go to LABACE, the Latin American Business Aviation Show here in not too long. What are you seeing?

Brian Kough: Well, again, I guess it's how you skin the cat when you say the strongest. Obviously North America is just a giant for business aviation by fleet strength and number of hours operated, number of operations, et cetera. So like I mentioned, almost any way you measure it, it's two-thirds of the world's business aviation. So that's definitely the largest. Latin America is interesting from the standpoint of it is now the second largest region by fleet strength. So we have a very large kind of used transaction market that kind of flies under the radar, if I can use that euphemism, that owners in those regions are acquiring business aviation and aircraft for many of the same reasons. Accessibility and privacy and just convenience. So up to 14% of the fleet that we're tracking out of AWIN, our Fleet Discovery product are based out of Latin America. It does include in our measure Mexico, by the way. Anyways, it's keeping score, but Europe's still strong at 12% of the fleet and then the rest is scattered around the rest of the world.

Molly McMillin: Great. Well, it looks like we're about out of time. Brian, are there any final thoughts?

Brian Kough: Yeah, I think from going back to a utilization perspective, it's really interesting to see the top operators, a NetJets and Flexjet, VistaJet, Fly Exclusive on Wheels Up and especially Wheels Up after the arrangement and cash infusion from Delta is really picked up operations last second quarter up 33% versus a quarter-on-quarter in 2024. So huge pickup there. You measure it going back to 2019 and almost everyone's 100%, 150%, 100% higher in utilization hours. So it's not necessarily using the aircraft more, but that also includes aircraft acquisition. So some really positive, some of the numbers positive, very positive in that from a top operators. And then there's interesting story of, well, how are they utilizing that? We kind of talked about those, that average utilization per aircraft, but those are even slightly in a positive as well. So overall, a good news story from utilization and new aircraft perspective. Yeah.

Molly McMillin: Well, I'm so sorry we are out of time, but sure, appreciate your insights, Brian, and we thank you for being here.

Brian Kough: Sure, sure. Very welcome. Thanks for having me. And we can talk about this for hours as we do on the side. So yeah,

Molly McMillin: I might mention that for more news and analysis and market intelligence and the full report that's available to our AWIN members, and you can become a member by going to aviationweek.com/awinbusiness.

Brian Kough: Yeah, many of the numbers that I forgot to mention are based out of the key performance indicators that I mentioned, so that's available to our AWIN customers. So we are interested in keeping track of the market. We break this down in a lot of details for analysts and people in the industry to keep track of.

Molly McMillin: Great. Well, Brian, thank you. We appreciate you being here. And we thank Jeremy Kariuki, our podcast producer, and we especially thank you all for listening.

Jeremy Kariuki: Thanks for listening to the BCA podcast by Aviation Week Network. This week's episode was produced by Jeremy Kariuki. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe or follow us on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to support us, please leave a rating wherever you listen. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.