Ionic Insights: The Business Jet Fleet in Japan

Welcome to the latest edition of Ionic Insights in which we focus on the business jet fleet in Japan.

We analyse the size, composition and age of the installed fleet, whilst simultaneously investigating the most numerous OEMs, registries and base locations.

Background

Japan is the fourth largest economy in the world. It has expertise in advanced manufacturing (most notably vehicles, machinery, chemicals and manufactured goods) and services.

Japan’s services sector, including financial services, now accounts for approximately 75 per cent of GDP. Key export markets include the United States, China and the Republic of Korea.

Analysis

In spite of the size of its population and economy and the international nature of much of its business, Japan has a comparatively modest installed business jet fleet of 60* aircraft (*Source: AMSTAT, April ‘24) - a fleet not too dissimilar in size to that of Spain, the subject of our last edition of Ionic Insights (see that analysis here).

Much like Spain, Light/Very-light jets dominate and in fact represent almost three quarters of all aircraft. Textron (Cessna) is the largest OEM by fleet size, alone making up forty-five percent of the fleet.

Over half of all aircraft are based in the capital city of Tokyo. Whilst the most popular aircraft model is the HondaJet Elite.

Overall, the average age of the fleet is a relatively young 10 years; with 77% percent of the fleet being registered domestically, JA-.

See the following slide for a detailed breakdown of this analysis:

Source: AMSTAT, April 2024.