Stats from above #4

The summer vacation has come to an end, and students are going back to school. Another thing that is back beyond the start of the school semester is another installment of our monthly blog series - Stats From Above.  A series that provides an overview of the most fascinating statistics and insights from the business aviation industry. From the most popular airports to the busiest routes, we delve into a variety of flight related data. If you don’t want to jump right into this installment, you can check out our Stats From Above from May, June or July.

Stats from above

The stats from August are in. So, without further ado, let us take a peek at the data kindly provided by our partners from the EBAA to see how the business jet industry has fared on the old continent over the past month.

During August there were almost 1,500 active airports for arriving flights, accounting for a total of 71,651 arrivals. Looking at the business jets that took to the sky during the past month, there were 4,846 active jets, with the Cessna-Citation Excel accounting for the most flights with over 5,700 arrivals. The second and third most active aircrafts were two Turboprops – the Pilatus PC-12 and the King Air 200.

Turboprops were the most heavily used aircraft segment with over 15,200 departures under their belt. All three models of jets were used for short haul flights averaging up to a maximum of 1.4 hours in the air. A reasonable explanation for the short flights would be that they were either domestic flights or to destinations in neighboring countries.

Busiest airports and routes

Speaking of domestic flights, looking at the country flows, domestic flights were quite the theme during August.  The first seven country flows are all domestic flights, with the top three being France with 4,344 flights, the United Kingdom coming in second with 3,999 and Italy bring up the rear with 3,226 flights.

So it makes sense that the top 3 busiest airports by number of arrivals were from France and Italy, with France’s Nice Côte d'Azur and Paris Le Bourget coming first and second and  Italy’s Olbia Costa Smeralda airport coming in third. The French Riviera being the most popular destination comes as no surprise since during august it hosted a bevy of major events such as the Plages Electroniques Festival featuring world class producers like Armin Van Buuren or DJ Snake.  Olbia isn’t a stranger to festivals either, hosting two major musical festivals in august  Arabax and the Red Valley Festival. So, the heavy traffic to the two popular summer vacation hotspots probably explains itself.

It therefore seems like no coincidence that when we take a look at the top airport pairs, that Olbia Costa Smeralda are Nice Côte d'Azur made it on to the list. In fact, there were 131 flights from Olbia to Nice and 122 flights the other way around. It seems that music festivals were very popular with European jetsetters.

Jet of the Month

July’s Jet of the Month is the Dassault Falcon 7X produced by Dassault Aviation, a French business jet and military aircraft manufacturer founded in 1929 by industrialist Marcel Bloch. The Dassault Falcon 7X was first introduced at the Paris Air Show in 2001 and took its maiden flight in 2005. It entered service in 2007 and there were 289 units of the Falcon 7X manufactured until a more modernized version called the Falcon 8Xsucceeded it. That’s it for the brief intro and history lesson on the Falcon 7X, now let’s move on to the details and numbers.

The aircraft itself is classified as long-range business jet and depending on the configuration it can seat anywhere from twelve up to sixteen passengers comfortably. The Falcon 7X trijet is powered by a trio of Pratt & Whitney PW307A jet engines, giving an approximate flight range of 11,000 km. Which allows you to reach most destinations without the need for a layover or refueling.

A fun fact worth mentioning is, that the Falcon 7X was able to set a new speed record in 2014, managing a flight between New York Teterboro Airport and London City Airport in a 5 hours and 54 minutes. So, not only is the Dassault Falcon 7X comfortable and practical, it’s also fast.

So how much will a comfortable, efficient, and fast jet set you back? Well, a new Falcon 7X could go for as much as US$ 54 million. However, when it comes to the used jets market the average asking price hovers around the US$24 million mark or so.  Usually the final price, depends on different factors such as the jet’s configuration, age, and the number of units that are on sale at the given time.

So, you have an idea about the price, but how long does the business jet stay on the market if you’re looking to purchase one? Well, you’d better act fast since the 7X doesn’t stay on the market for all that long. The median time a Falcon 7X stays on the market is around 106 days and sometimes the jet can be off the market within 80 days or so.