Homebuilt Aircraft Fleet Sizes - 2024

[Wanttaja]

As I do every year, I downloaded the FAA Registry on the first of January, and run a few macros to assess the homebuilt fleet.

A couple of caveats: First, my analysis only includes aircraft that are in the FAA registry as Experimental Amateur-Built. There are another ~5,000 aircraft in the registry with homebuilt-like names, but show a blank in the column that records airworthiness. So the totals may be less than you'd get with an only search of the registry (which doesn't take the airworthiness registration into account).

Second, when I developed the macros that generate these lists, I include only aircraft types that I thought might show a significant fleet size, or if I knew folks with that type. So this doesn't include every single homebuilt type. My type tally gets about 2/3rds of the total; there are almost 10,000 homebuilts not reflected in the list.

Third, the FAA changed the re-registration interval last year from three years to seven. This (of course) affected how many airplanes were removed from the registry. In some cases, it may look like a jump in the number of aircraft, but probably reflects the lower number of aircraft deregistrered.

Fourth, I've tried a few tricks to format this, hopefully it's readable.

Type	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Air Command	18	18	17	17	17
Aventura	50	48	47	49	50
Avid	280	278	271	267	274
Baby/Junior Ace	199	197	193	196	195
Bede BD-4	78	79	79	77	76
Bede BD-5	32	31	30	29	29
Benson Gyro	64	62	58	47	44
Bowers Fly Baby	135	130	132	131	132
Carbon Cub (EAB)	308	331	388	484	565
Challenger	476	461	447	442	436
Christen Eagle	192	193	191	194	194
Cozy	156	158	157	168	172
Glasair	563	558	565	568	571
GlaStar/Sportsman	438	443	450	454	470
Harmon Rocket	75	78	79	81	83
Hatz	110	113	117	119	123
Kitfox	889	887	885	920	957
Kolb (Ex-AB)	186	181	177	174	169
Lancair (All Models)	834	839	821	836	846
Lancair IV	243	244	245	246	248
Midget Mustang	204	202	199	194	195
Murphy	159	160	158	163	173
Pietenpol	289	284	278	282	286
Pitts (EX-AB)	534	522	522	528	536
Pulsar/KIS	105	102	102	98	98
Quickie/Q2/Q200	100	98	99	100	100
Quicksilver EX-AB	129	131	129	130	132
RAF-2000 Gyro	69	66	62	65	65
Rand KR-2	124	115	109	108	109
RANS	652	663	676	701	722
RANS S-12	109	104	102	101	98
RANS S-6	200	198	201	200	201
RANS S-7	208	213	217	222	224
Rotorway	287	283	274	286	287
Rutan Long-EZ	378	369	371	374	379
Rutan Varieze	231	222	219	217	217
SeaRey	235	236	235	242	246
Sonerai	158	155	145	144	147
Sonex	527	532	539	547	568
Steen Skybolt	215	211	208	210	211
Stolp	354	342	337	338	343
Stolp Starduster	308	301	294	294	299
Thorp T-18	236	238	235	236	240
Vans	6779	6960	7115	7336	7499
Vans RV-3	149	149	146	146	144
Vans RV-4	921	922	915	931	938
Vans RV-6	1737	1750	1756	1771	1771
Vans RV-7	1322	1358	1400	1457	1493
Vans RV-8	1278	1304	1315	1338	1374
Vans RV-9	677	689	702	719	732
Vans RV-10	492	530	570	616	641
Vans RV-12 (EX-AB)	74	81	82	85	88
Vans RV-14	134	182	234	277	322
Velocity	228	228	236	244	250
Volksplane	48	48	45	47	49
Zenair	1028	1066	1091	1140	1178
Zenair CH-601	325	323	313	321	321
Zenair CH-701	333	329	339	350	352
Zenair CH-750	247	285	306	334	366
Zenair CH-801				46	47
Overall	26941	27117	27315	28075	28798

Note the net increase in the number of homebuilts in 2024 is shown as about the same as the previous year (about 700). However, the number of homebuilts deregistered last year dropped, too. When that's taken into account, about 995 new homebuilts were added to the registry last year. On the previous year, the total added was quite higher, about 1300.

The increases include aircraft previously-deregistered that were put back on the registry last year. So they aren't all "new" homebuilts.

Ron Wanttaja