• Summary of 2023 report
• Complete report

Summary

This annual survey covers all Australian registered aircraft used in the Commercial Air Transport (CAT) and General Aviation (GA) sectors of the Australian aviation industry.

The CAT sector is made up of scheduled commercial air transport and non-scheduled commercial air transport.

The GA sector is made up of all flying activity by Australian-registered aircraft other than commercial air transport. The major categories of flying are aerial work, own use business flying, instructional flying, personal and pleasure flying and other flying. In addition, the sport aviation segment includes operations by ultralight aircraft, gliders, hang gliders and gyrocopters.

The base measure of General Aviation is flying hours. All operators of VH registered aircraft are surveyed annually and asked to report hours flown and landings across various activity types. Response to this year's collection was 72.0 per cent.

The survey results are merged with details from the civil aircraft register, which gives access to additional relevant information including aircraft type, engine and fuel type, country and year of manufacture.

Aircraft registered with Recreational Aviation Australia (RA-Aus) have been included in the annual Australian Aircraft Activity Survey since 2020. Responses were received for 74.4 per cent of aircraft registered to RA-Aus. Statistics for the rest of the sport aviation segment are collected from self-administrating associations. Like the rest of GA, flying hours are the prime measure of activity.

Key Indicators

Total hours flown in Australia by Australian owned and operated aircraft increased by 10.8 per cent in 2023 to 3.58 million hours.

Commercial Air Transport hours flown by VH-registered aircraft increased by 25.7 per cent to 1.9 million hours. Hours flown by scheduled commercial air transport increased by 25.7 per cent to 1.37 million hours, while hours flown by non-scheduled commercial air transport increased by 2.9 per cent to 526,031 hours.

General aviation hours flown by VH-registered aircraft increased by 4.9 per cent to 1.9 million hours. Sport and pleasure flying hours increased (up 10.2 per cent to 246,042 hours), Instructional flying (up 13.3 per cent to 381,939 hours), Own use business flying (down 5.4 per cent to 129,604 hours) and Aerial Work (up 0.4 per cent to 550,385 hours).

Sport aviation (ultralights, gliders, hang gliders and gyrocopters) activity generally experience large swings in activity from year to year. In 2023, sport aviation activity decreased 5.3 per cent to 333,583 hours.

Hours Flown in Australian Aircraft Activity (000's)—years ended December

^*VH aircraft are registered with CASA
^*non-VH aircraft are registered with self-administrating associations