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Homebuilt Aircraft Fleet Size - 2024
As I do every year, I downloaded the FAA Registry on the first of January, and run a few macros to assess the homebuilt fleet.
A couple of caveats: First, my analysis only includes aircraft that are in the FAA registry as Experimental Amateur-Built. There are another ~5,000 aircraft in the registry with homebuilt-like names, but show a blank in the column that records airworthiness. So the totals may be less than you'd get with an only search of the registry (which doesn't take the airworthiness registration into account).
Second, when I developed the macros that generate these lists, I include only aircraft types that I thought might show a significant fleet size, or if I knew folks with that type. So this doesn't include every single homebuilt type. My type tally gets about 2/3rds of the total; there are almost 10,000 homebuilts not reflected in the list.
Third, the FAA changed the re-registration interval last year from three years to seven. This (of course) affected how many airplanes were removed from the registry. In some cases, it may look like a jump in the number of aircraft, but probably reflects the lower number of aircraft deregistrered.
PDF is attached.
Note the net increase in the number of homebuilts in 2024 is shown as about the same as the previous year (about 700). However, the number of homebuilts deregistered last year dropped, too. When that's taken into account, about 995 new homebuilts were added to the registry last year. On the previous year, the total added was quite higher, about 1300.
The increases also include previously-deregistered aircraft that were put back on the registry...so they're not necessarily "new" homebuilts.
Ron Wanttaja
