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Charter Volume (May 19, 2022)

Flight and Fuel Insights

At a macro level the price of fuel is showing a drop over the first two weeks of May. As you can see in the charts below, the price per gallon dropped 10 cents from $4.59 to $4.49.

At the end of April

Through May 13th

Both of the above charts were pulled from IATA's website: https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/

While the price at the terminal has dropped a bit, we haven't seen that reflected in the prices at many FBO's for reasons we have previously discussed. Where the national average (according to AirNav) was $6.47/gal two weeks ago, it is $6.75/gal. today. The highest single location posted retail price I could find was at Boston Logan, which came in at $13.61, while fuel at JFK has dropped to $11.83 from the $14.78/gal two weeks ago.

In my last note and on the call I remarked that the YoY increase was outpacing my expectations. I believed that growth (absent any fuel or inflation related issues) would be in the mid single digits on a percentage basis.

My basis for this was that the industry would have a hard time maintaining double-digit growth above 2021's already high numbers. As you can see, the YoY growth has dropped into single digit territory, but the absolute hours are trending downward too, so this is not just a case of catching up to last year. In the first week of April we showed 40k hours for the cohort of aircraft that we track. That number is down to 34k for the second week of May.

This could be the first signs of the charter market catching up to world events. We will need a little more time and more data to be sure, but it is something we need to watch for sure. It's important to note that we are still recording growth over 2021, so while the growth rate may be slowing, we still have very strong volumes across the board.

Part 91 flying has not decreased at the same rate that we've seen in the Part 135 world. The MTD for Part 91 is still trending at 27% above 2021, compared with 30% at the end of April.

Looking at airports, Teterboro is showing 3,000 more operations (55% more YoY) this May when compared with the same period in 2021, so while traffic may be growing at a slower pace at the national level, we are seeing trends that have more traffic coming back to major metro airports.

For those who wish to join the call to see the breakdown by size class, the top 50 O/D pairs, and 50+ other airports, join the call at 3pm and Tanya will walk you through our deck.

Happy Thursday!

-Greg