The shipments in GAMA are delivery date based, not on any "model year" or other basis.

Members in GAMA attest to providing accurate information, that is part of the GAMA terms.

Mike C.

Are you SURE? How do you know?

I would not expect them to lie, but my experience in other industries is that things get missed, or filled out incorrectly. I have seen this multiple times when comparing internal data to an industry report. One example, a client had submitted data for a single plant instead of company wide for three straight years, so the reported units was about 30% of actual.

Exactly. No one is accusing anyone of lying. It's much more likely attributable to clerical errors. The example I gave of the Phenom 100 is a good one, GAMA likely missed the model change to EX's

The one that always gets me is Gulfstream, I show 62 airplanes, GAMA shows 111

That's a huge difference!

Gulfstream does sell aircraft that don't make the registry, but I doubt it's 50 airplanes.

GAMA 2023 report, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, full year:

I seriously doubt Gulfstream made an inaccurate report to GAMA.

Hopefully you didn't pay too much for your data source.

Mike C.

GAMA 2023 report, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, full year:

I seriously doubt Gulfstream made an inaccurate report to GAMA.

Hopefully you didn't pay too much for your data source.

Mike C.

I'm sure I'll regret this but I went down the FAA registry rabbit hole, filtered by manufacturer year(*) and easily found 64 G500/600/650/650ER airframes with enough serial number gaps to get into the 80s so the GAMA numbers pass the sniff test to me. 22 G280s looks about right as well.

To compound my woes I went even further down the rabbit hole looking for some "missing" serial numbers - there are some big gaps in the G650/ERs - and discovered s/n 6525 listed for sale as "never been in service" and now I'm curious as to how a year-old $75m jet is just.... sitting, doing nothing.

(* - Maybe I should be using first registration date instead of mfr year but it takes longer and I need to dig back out of the rabbit hole)

22 G280's is exactly what I show.

On the larger airplanes the serials bounce around a lot, so it makes it really confusing. A couple of years ago the serial numbers for the G500's shifted 80 serials, with a couple in the middle. The G600's had a similar shift of 60 or so serials.

The 650ER's have ten missing serial numbers. Again, always wonder if maybe these are going to the government and their existence is hidden.

I did run a three year period and came up with 318 units, which makes sense and matches the 100 or so airplanes a year number. Which is a crazy number considering the size and complexity of those aircraft!

Regarding the sitting $75M jets, some “greenies” sit for 3-4 months waiting on P&I, particularly if they are going to an outside shop. If it were my $5-10M paying for P&I, I would want one of the Gulfstream shops to do it. Gulfstream does stellar work and their cabinet sub in Pooler builds the finest aircraft cabinets that I have ever seen. They will sit sometimes waiting on their P&I slot.l, manufactured in 2023 but delivered in 2024. Depending upon final locality, that can save $100K per month in taxes, for it to sit until completed versus it being delivered and then waiting for their P&I slot at Joe’s amazing P&I.

Generally, the state and local taxes are not paid until the aircraft is “delivered.” You can bet that the tax person cometh as soon as the plane hits the FAA registry.

A fun experiment - hire the wrong aircraft titling agent and have them accidentally title your G-V in Chatham County, GA with the Gulfstream address. Care to guess the tax bill for that mistake, just for the few months until it got caught and fixed? It was in the high10s of thousands on a $43M bizjet! A new G650 is around $1.02M per year. Also, Chatham County has assessors that walk the ramp and make note of N numbers and even gander at the engines and avionics or local aircraft. If you have something looking like a new engine or overhaul in March, you get to fill out a tax form and submit your log pages. It’s about $600 in revenue and takes them less than an hour to walk the ramp. Even back in the late 90s they were looking at flight data and flight patterns for aircraft that were staying too long to be “transient.” A (then) $43M bizjet, even for a month, is a huge win. Wheels Up had a KA350 at KSAV off and on for a few weeks and they tracked the N number and they had nearly a $1000 bill. That was in 2022 or 2023. Since then WU rotated airframes. That’s just some hangar talk from the last time I was there, a year ago.

Another irony - Aircraft are delivered overseas and sit for months waiting for their registration. Some Chinese jets get registered but not approved to fly. each flight has to be approved by the Chinese government, including the military. Imagine if we had specific VFR and IFR routes and everything else was R- or P-. Sometimes the planes will fire up the APU, or use a GPU, the passenger will board and do business,
eat and drink, and the plane has never moved. Sometimes they taxi from one side of the airport to another.

Also, some Gulfstream deliveries never make it to a civilian registry. Their special missions aircraft are amazing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any knowledge of how many special missions aircraft are delivered and no longer follow Gulfstream or their press releases. However, they are really neat to see something with large fairings on the side, covering electronics and antennas, effortlessly take off like that extra drag wasn’t even there.

I miss being an airport bum at KSAV! KIAD and KJYO are not at all interesting as a Savannah “tea” party. Southern people are nice but love to spill the T and avoid the tax person.

Interesting: no doubt things are/were booming. Yet on private pilot sites we are seeing a BIG cutback in flights. On the GA side of things. I understand airlines are cutting back on pilot hires too. Funny how most people just keep wanting to put a positive spin on anything they’re neck deep involved in.

I think it’s a mixed bag. Overall hours are up in general aviation, people are flying more and using general aviation aircraft more. It probably depends on what neck of the woods you’re in, but almost everywhere I fly ramp space is hard to find, hangers are impossible to find, patterns are busy, bordering on almost being unsafe. My understanding is just the Cirrus fleet, by itself, is flying over 1 million hours a year.

That is only a little above 100 hours/year per aircraft, which seems pretty reasonable as an average.

Mike C.