Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration. Administrator’s Fact Book (August 2005).
General Aviation Aircraft Types
Because of the diversity of operations considered under the broad definition of general aviation, GA encompasses a wide spectrum of aircraft types. Registered general aviation aircraft in the United States – numbering about 210,000 – range in size and purpose from very light sport aircraft with maximum takeoff weights of less than 1,320 pounds used strictly for recreational flying to very large business jets weighing more than 100,000 pounds used for long-range transcontinental and international travel. The composition of the current GA fleet is shown in Figure 1. Single-engine piston aircraft make up the large bulk of the fleet (69%). The large majority of these aircraft are comparably small in size, most weighing less than 5,000 pounds maximum takeoff weight including payload. Experimental aircraft, mostly small home-built airplanes, make up an additional 10% of the current fleet. Thus, while GA is quite diverse, the typical image of a GA aircraft as a small, light, single-engine airplane is an accurate portrayal of the large majority (about 75%) of the GA fleet.
Figure 1. The General Aviation Fleet
Source: Federal Aviation Administration. FAA Aerospace Forecasts – Fiscal
Years 2005-2016. March 2005.
Although turbojet aircraft are a fast-growing segment of the GA fleet, they comprise only about 4% of the current GA fleet, and this is not expected to change much over the next 10 years. Nonetheless, the growing number of turbojet aircraft has important implications for GA security as these heavier, faster, and more capable aircraft become more and more prevalent. While the numbers of piston aircraft are expected to remain flat and the numbers of GA turboprops are expected to grow only slightly (about 1.3% annually), the numbers of GA turbojets is forecast to grow at a brisk pace of about 6% per year over the next ten years. By 2016 it is expected that there will be almost 16,000 GA turbojets in service in the United States compared to about 8,750 today.7
While the numbers of GA turbojets is expected to increase dramaticallyover the next 10 years, it is important to bear in mind that small, single-engine aircraft will remain the large majority of the GA fleet by 2016. The FAA expects that over the next 10 years, propeller driven single-engine airplanes, two-seat light sport aircraft, and small home-built experimental airplanes will continue to make up more than 75% of the GA fleet.8 Security experts recognize that both the threats and vulnerabilities of these smaller aircraft are significantly different than the threats and vulnerabilities of medium and large sized GA turbojets and turboprops. Another segment of the GA industry is helicopters (rotorcraft), which make up only about 3% of the total GA fleet but are involved in several diverse and unique flight operations that introduce their own distinct set of security threats and vulnerabilities. The diversity of GA aircraft types and operations flown suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to security is not practical – a tenet that both the GA industry and the TSA agree on.9
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