How many hours does a plane fly per year?

[Viennair]

Hi all,

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if anybody ever tried to replicate the flight plan and fleet of an existing airline? I guess it would be hard to survive, as the pre-conditions (competition, demand) might be different etc. But my main question is based around the question of plane flight hours per year.

Some time ago I read an article that some planes of the "old" European airlines fly only around 1000 hours per year (compared to a much higer number of hours with LCC), which seemed to be a rather small number to me. However, I was not able to find any source online to give me more details on flighthours per year. Does anybody know how many hours an airplane flies on average per year, or where to find some data on that?

I assume that 12 hours a day (I think Southwest has 12.5) in the short&medium-haul market is already a high level in real life. I'm obviously not an expert, but assuming a plane flies like 300 days a year (reduced for C & B Checks etc) this would lead to some 3000 hours?! Please correct my vague calculation if you have some real data on that, I would appreciate!

Thanks in advance!

[Miller11]

This seems to vary look at these used examples

https://www.aircraftonsale.com/details.php?id=1036

And this

https://www.aircraftonsale.com/details.php?id=1038

http://www.planemart.com/FAA/Listing.asp?userid=544&listid=-8643611

Would be interesting to find out from someone

[alexgv1]

BA avg fleet utilisation something like 8 hrs per day. Multiply by 365 and round down for maintenance.

[stevecree]

8 hours....my god no wonder BA is in the s*** !   They need to take a page out of Ryanairs manual, who's a/c fly from 5 till past midnight !

[alexgv1]

I think Ryan has something like 12 hrs, still nowhere near AWS levels.

BA long haul fleet spends a lot of time on the ground at stopovers and the like, whereas part of Emirates key strategy was to fly their planes as much as possible.

[Viennair]

Hey,

thanks for the answers. So based on that I assume sthg around 2500-3000 flight hours, depending on the type of airline?! If somebody finds some stats on that, would be great if you could share them with us. Thx again!

[schro]

typing from my phone, but 2 quick points I an find numbers for at some point.

utilization from an hours perspective depends a lot on the plane type and routes that its flying. A 77L might be in the air 16+ hours at a time but only do a single flight during the day. A regional jet might do 6-10 flights per day but spend far less time in the air.

from a maintenance perspective, cycles matter far more than hours. You might also be interested my rejected feature request (due to lack of data) titled cycle and hour limits (or something like that). There is some far data quoted with regards to design life of most major birds.

[alexgv1]

from a maintenance perspective, cycles matter far more than hours. You might also be interested my rejected feature request (due to lack of data) titled cycle and hour limits (or something like that). There is some far data quoted with regards to design life of most major birds.

Yeah pressurisation cycles, landings on the gear and wing loading are much more important to lifespan of the airframe (as wings/fuselage/undercarriage not really possible to replace). Engine maintenance is still based on hours though.