Data for March 2021 shows that business aviation has hit the 10,000 flight mark on a single day. The feat occurred on Friday 12 March with 10,323 business aviation movements recorded in North America.

This comes as the rest of the month has performed well on the way to a recovery. Initial forecasts for March 2021 called for flight activity to increase 31 per cent from March 2020 but decline 10 per cent from March 2019. With half of the month in the books, flight activity is on pace to finish up 42 per cent from March 2020 and down just three per cent from March 2019.

Overall flight activity continues to point to a strong showing for leisure traffic but it shows there is still a while to go before a return to normal. Normally, Thursday would be the busiest day of the week but it has recently been replaced by Friday, which is traditionally the second busiest day of the week due to a strong mix of business and leisure flying. Weekend activity continues to remain stronger than normal as well. ARGUS International is seeing increased demand in the Part 91 and large cabin markets. Large cabin activity is on pace for 35,000 movements during the month of March. Pre-pandemic, January and February 2020 recorded 38,000 and 37,000 large cabin flights respectively, and the highest month since has recorded just 29,000 movements, which means March 2021 is on pace for a nearly 20 per cent gain in large cabin movements.

The Part 91 market, which has averaged 99,000 monthly movements over the last six months, is on pace for 121,000 flights during March.

“This is a possible sign that corporate and traditional business travel is beginning to resume, following the vaccine rollout,” says Travis Kuhn, VP of market intelligence with ARGUS International.

Individual market demand shows a strong mix of business and leisure destinations in the top 25 markets. Two of the three largest states for traffic, Texas and Florida, have been leading the way in terms of reopening and they feature 11 of the top 25 airports for the first half of March. California, the remaining state in the top three featured two airports in the top 25, namely Van Nuys and Orange County. Colorado has three airports in the top 25 while Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Arizona, Massachusetts, Utah, Tennessee and DC each had one airport in the top 25.

“As we look to the back half of the month, we'll be paying close attention to traffic from the 22nd to the 28th,” Kuhn continues. “Traditionally, traffic will cool slightly during the last full week of the month, but given the rapidly changing dynamics it is highly likely that we could see one to two more days top 10,000 before March is in the books.”

Meanwhile ARGUS International has incorporated global flight tracking movements into the reporting services for its TRAQPak product line. With this move it is now able to provide its high integrity data reporting not just in North America, but around the world, creating a one-stop shop for flight data needs in business and commercial aviation.

“This is a proud moment for the TRAQPak and market intelligence team. We have spent the last few years fine tuning this data with our partners, and we have worked tirelessly to ensure the same data integrity standards that we apply in our North American data are applied to our data sources from around the world. The specialised data fields that our clients have come to expect, such as fuel burn, operational category and so on, will be available via our global data service,” notes Kuhn.

The result is a global reporting platform that delivers the type of granularity that the market has demanded.

“Our customers will no longer have to question how many Cessna Citation operations there were in Brazil, how robust the light jet market is in Australia or what estimated fuel burn looks like across Europe. All of these questions are now able to be answered in a substantive way,” Kuhn adds.

Customers will be able to access this data via a subscription to their data feeds or via individual custom reports. This release is just the beginning as the TRAQPak team expects to bring their highly accurate North American forecasting algorithms onto the global stage over the next year.