Weekly COVID-19 Aviation Update: Pandemic Finally Drives Operating Leasing To 50% Market Share

April 8, 2021

Since the start of 2020 and in spite of the evolving negative impact of COVID-19 on new aircraft demand, Airbus and Boeing have delivered 822 new passenger jets to customers.

Operating lessors have continued to feature heavily amongst these customers, with The Cirium Core fleet data indicating that 228 of these aircraft (some 28%) have been delivered directly to lessors from their own order books before subsequent placement to airline operators. The data also shows that those same lessors additionally acquired a further 619 passenger jets in the same period via purchase and leaseback, including 542 in 2020 and another 77 in the first quarter of 2021.

The acquisition of these 847 aircraft drove a net growth in the installed global operating leasing portfolio of some 522 aircraft, with the balancing 325 units either parted-out at end of life or otherwise sold out of the lessors’ existing portfolios.

During that same period, the overall global fleet of equivalent passenger single-aisle and twin-aisle jets grew by only 144 units to total 22,185 today – 17,256 single-aisle and 4,929 twin-aisle aircraft.

As a consequence, the market share of operating leasing has increased by 2.0% points since the end of 2019. It has thus quietly and unheralded achieved the 50.0% market share we see today.

There are many negatives about the pandemic but this one positive – the continued robustness and growth of the operating leasing business model – can at least give us cause for celebration.

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