The most common US-registered business jets and selected charter turboprops, by tail count
We matched our 27 July 2026 copy of the FAA Releasable Aircraft Registry against a maintained list of business jet families, plus a small number of charter-relevant turboprops, and kept only records with FAA status V or M, the two statuses that represent a current registration. 21,739 aircraft remained. The Pilatus PC-12 is the single most common type, with 1,422 records.
Inclusion establishes only that the record carries a current FAA registration status. The registry doesn't record whether an aircraft is currently flying, airworthy, Part 135-approved, or available for charter.
The top 15 by tail count
| Rank | Aircraft family | Category | Records |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pilatus PC-12 | Turboprop | 1,422 |
| 2 | Cessna Caravan | Turboprop | 1,011 |
| 3 | Daher/Socata TBM 700 | Turboprop | 977 |
| 4 | Bombardier Challenger 300/350 | Super-midsize | 858 |
| 5 | Beechcraft King Air 300/350 | Turboprop | 777 |
| 6 | Cessna Citation Excel/XLS/XLS+ | Midsize | 738 |
| 7 | Beechcraft King Air 200 | Turboprop | 711 |
| 8 | Embraer Phenom 300 | Light | 663 |
| 9 | Cessna CitationJet | Light | 663 |
| 10 | Bombardier Challenger 600/601/604/605/650 | Heavy | 633 |
| 11 | Gulfstream IV/GIV-SP/G300/G450 | Heavy | 632 |
| 12 | Cessna Citation II/Bravo | Light | 629 |
| 13 | Beechcraft King Air C90 | Turboprop | 604 |
| 14 | Cessna Citation CJ3 | Light | 595 |
| 15 | Cessna Citation V/Ultra/Encore | Light | 594 |
Six of the fifteen are turboprops. Among jets alone, the Bombardier Challenger 300/350 leads, with the Cessna Citation Excel/XLS/XLS+ close behind.
Rows represent normalised aircraft families, not individual FAA model designations. The FAA assigns a separate manufacturer/model reference code to each build variant, but several variants often share one type certificate: the Challenger 300 and 350 do, as do the Challenger 604/605/650. Where that's the case, the row's count and label cover every variant on that certificate. "Gulfstream IV/GIV-SP/G300/G450" is the legacy GIV-derived family, distinct from the current-production Gulfstream G400.
Selected turboprops
The allow-list is mostly business jets, plus a small number of charter-relevant turboprops: the Pilatus PC-12, Cessna Caravan, Beechcraft King Air family and Daher/Socata TBM. The Pilatus PC-24 is a jet, not a turboprop, and is counted with the jets above. Turboprops are often cheaper to buy and run than a comparable light jet, which is why owner-operators and regional charter fleets favour them. The counts include every registered aircraft in these families regardless of role: private flying, charter, cargo, training and utility work are all counted the same way.
By category
Categories are CharterCircuit's own market classifications, based on typical cabin size, range and charter-market positioning. The FAA doesn't assign this classification.
| Category | Records |
|---|---|
| Light | 6,415 |
| Turboprop | 5,616 |
| Super-midsize | 2,973 |
| Midsize | 2,594 |
| Ultra-long-range | 2,346 |
| Heavy | 1,795 |
By brand
Brands here are normalised: aircraft are grouped by the name a reader would recognise rather than whichever corporate entity happens to appear in the FAA's manufacturer field. The Beechcraft King Air family and Premier I, for instance, appear under several FAA manufacturer strings (Beech, Raytheon Aircraft, Hawker Beechcraft) depending on when the aircraft was registered; all normalise to Beechcraft here.
| Brand | Records |
|---|---|
| Cessna | 6,788 |
| Gulfstream | 2,783 |
| Beechcraft | 2,655 |
| Bombardier | 2,127 |
| Pilatus | 1,610 |
| Dassault | 1,452 |
| Embraer | 1,243 |
| Learjet | 1,147 |
| Daher/Socata | 977 |
| Hawker | 580 |
| Honda | 236 |
| IAI | 141 |
Registration age
Of the 19,523 records with a usable manufacture year (2,216 have none recorded), the median manufacture year is 2008 and the mean is 2007.
| Decade | Records |
|---|---|
| 1960s | 39 |
| 1970s | 488 |
| 1980s | 1,499 |
| 1990s | 2,818 |
| 2000s | 5,926 |
| 2010s | 5,406 |
| 2020s | 3,347 |
Manufacture year alone doesn't determine an aircraft's condition or passenger experience: maintenance history, refurbishment, avionics and cabin updates matter more than chronological age.
The oldest aircraft with a current registration in the dataset is a 1965 Learjet 23 (several examples share that year, including N119BA). A current registration doesn't establish airworthiness or operational status. The newest manufacture-year records are dated 2026, including Cessna Citation CJ4, Bombardier Challenger 300/350 and Gulfstream G500/G700/G800 aircraft.
Methodology
We used a snapshot of the FAA Releasable Aircraft Registry pulled on 27 July 2026, matched against FAA manufacturer and model reference codes rather than free-text names. The register stores each aircraft against a manufacturer/model reference code ("560XL", "BD-700-1A10", "HA-420") rather than a marketing name, so text matching alone would miss most of the fleet.
We included records with FAA status V (valid registration) or M (assigned to the manufacturer under a dealer certificate). Status M widens the dataset beyond owner-registered aircraft: it includes aircraft a manufacturer holds under its own dealer certificate rather than a customer's registration. We excluded pending, reserved, sale-reported, expired and revoked registrations.
| FAA status | Meaning | Records |
|---|---|---|
| V | Valid registration | 21,442 |
| M | Assigned to the manufacturer under a dealer certificate | 297 |
Types are restricted to business jets and the turboprops listed above; regional jets, commercial airliners, piston aircraft, helicopters and military types sharing a manufacturer name with a covered business jet are excluded. Categories are CharterCircuit market classifications. Records without a usable manufacture year are shown separately and excluded from the age figures.
Explore the underlying aircraft type and tail records on CharterCircuit.