MINING THE DATA Continued from page 55 Presented on the next pages is the list of the TOP 500 airports ranked by 2018 activity and aircraft type, as com- pared to 2017. The airports are ranked by jet activity, and also include activity by turboprops (including helicopters) and piston aircraft. The majority of Business Aviation departures and arrivals on the TOP 500 airports ranking are jet aircraft. In 2018, jet activity accounted for 64% of such activity. BUSINESS AVIATION 2018 Piston 12% Turbine 24% Jet 64% 2007–2018 TOP 500 GROWTH BY TIER (JET ACTIVITY) 44% Source: FAA TFMSC Data for TOP 500 Airports Not surprisingly, the most active airports include TEB, VNY, and LAS. More importantly, what you really want to know is how your market performs over time, as compared to other airports that matter to you. Let’s look at an example that you can apply to your airport. Referring to the 2018 table of TOP 500 airports, Evansville, IN (EVV) is ranked 288th in jet activity with 3,262 jet movements in 2018. This includes both departures and arrivals, so we can assume that half of the business jets (or about 1,631) departed the FBO ramp in 2018 after being a 28% 15% 4% 0% 1–100 101–200 201–300 301–400 Source: FAA TFMSC, ARGI Analysis Even in outlying markets, mining the data is likely to show Business Aviation activity trends are saying good things about 2018 Business Aviation Activity and Trend “TOP 500” (ranked by 2018 Business Aviation “Jet” movements) Jet (avg: +3.8%) Turbine (avg: +1.2%) Rank 86 288 348 LEX - Lexington EVV - Evansville SPI - Springfield Movements 11,262 3,262 2,568 ‘18 vs 17 2.6% 13.5% 1.0% Movements 3,045 1,442 1,063 Source: FAA TFSMC, ARGI Analysis ‘18 vs ‘17 -10.1% -2.8% 4.4% Movements 2,053 1,214 912 Piston (avg: -0.6%) ‘18 vs ‘17 -10.3% -16.7% 20.2% 401–500 customer of the sole FBO (Tri-State Aero in this case). That’s an increase of 13.5% over the previous year. Turboprop activity at EVV was down slightly, and piston activity decreased about 17%. Comparable airports in the area are Lexington, KY (LEX, ranks 86th) and Springfield, IL (SPI, ranks 348th). It turns out that EVV had significantly better jet activity growth in both cases. As Yogi Berra said, “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.” In aviation services, 90% is operations; the other half is managing for the future. According to the FAA, Business Aviation is growing and steadily moving to smaller airports. This is not surprising given improved turbine aircraft performance on shorter runways and the increasing number of smaller airports with lower instrument approach mini- mums. In fact, Business Aviation jet activity is growing much faster at outlying airports, not the TOP 100, as shown below. 56 Aviation Business Journal | Spring 2019
