rwanttaja
01-01-2019, 12:57 PM
It's the first of the year, time for me to download the FAA aircraft registration database and provide some insights.
First up: Total registrations
Year
All Aircraft
All A/C Net
All A/C New
EAB
EAB Net
EAB New
2009
374373
-1751
5267
31914
672
1136
2010
373896
-477
4945
32682
768
1077
2011
367857
-6039
5185
33038
356
1022
2012
352198
-15659
5326
32041
-997
954
2013
317993
-34205
5983
27946
-4095
918
2014
312586
-5407
7181
27909
-37
1047
2015
314404
1818
10058
28078
169
950
2016
320683
6279
10533
28830
752
977
2017
312344
-8339
6622
28451
-379
917
2018
294221
-18123
6857
26572
-1879
888
"All" is the total number of registrations
"Net" is the change in the number of registrations vs. the previous year
"New" is the total number of new aircraft registrations. This is based on the "Net" value, corrected by the number of aircraft that had been de-registered that year.
Obviously, there was a big jump in the number of aircraft de-registered last year. Where this usually causes problems is when some bright spark tries to join two unrelated statistics...namely, the FAA registration database, the FAA estimate of annual flight hours, and the NTSB accident statistics.
Despite a nearly 2,000-aircraft reduction in the number of registered homebuilt aircraft, the number of ACTIVE homebuilts didn't decrease by that much. But since the "official" number of homebuilts dropped by almost 7%, someone will claim that the total flight hours flown by homebuilts last year ALSO dropped by 7%. This is probably not the case.
Plus, if someone then tries to compute fatality/100,000 flight hours, the supposed reduction in flight hours will make it APPEAR that the accident rate increased.
Now, word is that the number of EAB accidents was at a low last year. That should help, but one should, again, keep in mind that there are some loosey-goosey (pardon my French) games being played with these numbers.
Next step will be to extract the numbers of specific homebuilt types from the registry, and post the fleet sizes.
Ron Wanttaja
First up: Total registrations
Year
All Aircraft
All A/C Net
All A/C New
EAB
EAB Net
EAB New
2009
374373
-1751
5267
31914
672
1136
2010
373896
-477
4945
32682
768
1077
2011
367857
-6039
5185
33038
356
1022
2012
352198
-15659
5326
32041
-997
954
2013
317993
-34205
5983
27946
-4095
918
2014
312586
-5407
7181
27909
-37
1047
2015
314404
1818
10058
28078
169
950
2016
320683
6279
10533
28830
752
977
2017
312344
-8339
6622
28451
-379
917
2018
294221
-18123
6857
26572
-1879
888
"All" is the total number of registrations
"Net" is the change in the number of registrations vs. the previous year
"New" is the total number of new aircraft registrations. This is based on the "Net" value, corrected by the number of aircraft that had been de-registered that year.
Obviously, there was a big jump in the number of aircraft de-registered last year. Where this usually causes problems is when some bright spark tries to join two unrelated statistics...namely, the FAA registration database, the FAA estimate of annual flight hours, and the NTSB accident statistics.
Despite a nearly 2,000-aircraft reduction in the number of registered homebuilt aircraft, the number of ACTIVE homebuilts didn't decrease by that much. But since the "official" number of homebuilts dropped by almost 7%, someone will claim that the total flight hours flown by homebuilts last year ALSO dropped by 7%. This is probably not the case.
Plus, if someone then tries to compute fatality/100,000 flight hours, the supposed reduction in flight hours will make it APPEAR that the accident rate increased.
Now, word is that the number of EAB accidents was at a low last year. That should help, but one should, again, keep in mind that there are some loosey-goosey (pardon my French) games being played with these numbers.
Next step will be to extract the numbers of specific homebuilt types from the registry, and post the fleet sizes.
Ron Wanttaja