Call me crazy, but I just made some statistics over private aircraft in Norway. I wanted to see the extent of experimentals, annex II etc. Maybe I will update it yearly to see the changes going on. Raw material is obtain from the Norwegian CAA (LT) and from here and from the mikrolight organisation (microlights are not registered in the normal aircraft register by the LT, but have their own privately managed register). Things not needing registering, hang gliders etc, are not included here, as well as military/state AC.
At the moment there are 1635 aircraft registered here. This include airplanes, helicopters, gliders, balloons and microlights.
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The next graph shows private and commercial aircraft. Commercial aircraft are aircraft operated by a commercial company, typically B737 operated by NAS for instance, but the number is only approximate.
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All the private aircraft are shown in the next graph. What I call “Annex II” in that graph are all normal category non-EASA aircraft.
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The last graph shows how all EASA vs non-EASA aircraft are distributed (EASA also include balloons, gliders and helicopters)
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What’s interesting is that microlights now are 29% of all private aircraft. EASA, powered airplanes is only 32%, and a large percentage of those are owned by clubs. Also when looking at all micro + EX + Annex II (powered aircraft), there are many more of them compared with EASA powered aircraft. Still, when summing all EASA vs non-EASA aircraft, there are more EASA aircraft, due to a large contribution from gliders and helicopters. I should have made this several years earlier, because the number of EASA type aircraft has plummeted the last decades, but it would still be interesting to see what the future brings.
Filtered out the club owned planes vs the individually owned planes, which was rather interesting. The number of club owned EASA types are only 14%, the rest are privately owned. The number of club owned microlights are only 5%, while gliders are 32%.
I would believe percentage of club owned EASA types were much higher, and that probably was true 10-20 years ago. My theory is therefore that privately owned EASA types have been more or less constant, while club owned EASA types has drastically dropped. This makes sense, the typical club pilot has disappeared. He has purchased himself a microlight and moved to a microlight field. Glider-clubs are still going strong. Not a single helicopter is owned by a club.
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Just one remark about Club owned versus private: Very often Club used aircraft are privately owned.
Very interesting!
I wonder what comparable stats would be for UK Germany and France.
The UK reportedly has ~20k “EASA” aircraft (i.e. CofA, not Annex 2 / microlights etc) and I would expect the great majority of these to be operated (not necessarily owned outright) by PPL schools.
Just one remark about Club owned versus private: Very often Club used aircraft are privately owned.
Yes, private is not the correct term I guess, as club owned is also private. In the graphs above, a “club plane” is owned by a club, while a “private” is owned by one or several individuals (not a club). There are some planes that are owned by individuals and used by a club, but those are very few and mostly temporary arrangements. For a club to “rent” an aircraft is a very uneconomical thing to do from the club point of view.
The UK reportedly has ~20k “EASA” aircraft (i.e. CofA, not Annex 2 / microlights etc) and I would expect the great majority of these to be operated (not necessarily owned outright) by PPL schools.
There are some schools like that in Norway, but mostly PPL schools are club based (except helicopters). Anyway, those airplanes and helicopters are filtered out as “commercial”, since they are operated by a commercial entity (could also be state operated “college” in some cases). This means a “private” EASA aircraft is owned and operated either by an individual or a club. I did this to have a meaningful comparison with experimentals, Annex II and microlights (private flying).
It would indeed be interesting to see similar statistics from other nations.
For a club to “rent” an aircraft is a very uneconomical thing to do from the club point of view.
Maybe, but it’s not that uncommon for a club to operate an aircraft it doesn’t own.
A club in europe cannot directly own an N-reg plane, so there has to be a trust of some sort. An example for this is the Cessna/Columbia 400 in LSZH. In that particular case there’s AFAIK even another company in between the club that operates it and the trust.
Another example is the Super Cub HB-PPJ which is used for training for the mountain rating. It is owned by an individual, and operated by a club.
Such an arrangement IMO makes a lot of sense for both sides, the club can offer something it couldn’t offer otherwise (mountain rating instruction), and the owner doesn’t need an ATO or anything.
NB: I heard that the Cessna 400 in LSZH is going to be moved to HB reg. They had, at considerable financiall effort, to retrofit a DME, and they will have to deactivate their wing deice. That must hurt; to fly a plane that has deice equipment but not being able to use it. Apparently, the authorities would rather like us to fall out of the sky as a lump of ice rather than use the equipment the aircraft has to offer.
the Cessna 400 in LSZH is going to be moved to HB reg. They had, at considerable financiall effort, to retrofit a DME, and they will have to deactivate their wing deice.
That would be really stupid. Would be interested to know what the reasoning is. I hope it’s not that “not all members have FAA licenses” argument… people who spend 500€ an hour for the aircraft sure can spend 400€ once to get a 61.75 license…
Anyway, could be there are other reasons at play. Taxes maybe?
I hope it’s not that “not all members have FAA licenses” argument…
There was no reason given, but I think it is. That aircraft struggled for a long time to make any decent number of hours annually, it hardly made more than 100 hours if I remember correctly.
It’s been a long standing project to get it on HB register (since they bought it), but was delayed due to the DME issue and they tried to find a solution for getting the wing heat on HB register. But apparently they didn’t find any.
Interestingly, they try to promote the C400 by calculating LSZH-LFBH and back for their C172 and their C400. Even at this per mile scenario (and with 15kts headwind, otherwise the C400 would look even worse), the C400 is 15% more expensive than the C172. I guess there aren’t too many people willing to shell out 520€ per hour for a SEP. Furthermore, the currency requirements are such that if you want to fly this plane, you’ll need to either take your CFI with you, or be planning to fly a significant number of hours with it. But then there’s only one C400, so if it’s blocked by somebody else on the dates you want to go flying, tough luck.
I can’t see any significant tax angle to it…
The chart below is “All GA”. That is all EASA SEP, Twin piston and SET. Commercially operated “GA” are very few, only 26 in Norway (6.5% of all EASA GA). The vast majority of commercially operated aircraft are twin turboprop/jet or larger, or helicopters (Lots of those, particularly twin turboprop and helicopters of course, are also (commercial) GA, but where to draw the line?).
So it seems the majority of EASA GA (defined by SEP, Twin P, SET) are indeed individually owned private aircraft.
I think the exact type of ownership is a side issue, because schools get planes in all kinds of ways.
Some will lease them from a leasing company, some will rent them from a maintenance shop which maintains a number of very similar types (a very cost effective mode), some will rent them from a private owner.
That is going to make statistics collection hard.
The last one (private owner) is something I have seen quite a lot, but it works only in specific situations because the plane will get trashed. The benefit to the owner is
but in all cases the plane will be in a poor condition, but then most planes on the PPL training scene are! The first two items above are 100% legal but are highly provocative to the tax people here.
I would never do it, but I did have one school owner try to push me into letting him have access to it, which I did very briefly before I realised he was a Grade A crook (he had to vanish soon afterwards).
