Defining the age of an aircraft

Defining age

The age of an aircraft in Fleets Analyzer is defined as follows:

  • If the aircraft at the query date has the status “Retired” or “Written Off”, the aircraft age will be null (shown as “-” on detail grids).
  • In all other cases, the aircraft age will be the number of years between the query date and the Aircraft Start of Life Date.
  • The Aircraft Start of Life Date will be one of the following dates (in order of precedence, i.e. the first in the list that is available will be used), rounded nearest to one decimal place:
    • First Flight Date.
    • The earliest date the aircraft reached either status “In Service” or “Storage”.
  • If the Aircraft Start of Life Date is null, the aircraft age will be null (shown as “-” on detail grids) e.g. for aircraft with a status of “On order”.
  • If the Aircraft Start of Life Date is greater than the query date, the aircraft age will be null (shown as “-” on detail grids)

What about retired or written off aircraft?

The Age at Retirement/Written off in Fleets Analyzer is defined as follows:

  • If the aircraft has the status “Retired” or “Written Off”, the Age At Retirement will be the difference between the date of the earliest Retirement or Total Loss event for the aircraft and the Aircraft Start of Life Date, rounded nearest to one decimal place.
  • In all other cases, the Age At Retirement will be “-“

Why is the query date a factor?

On the Aircraft page, the Query Date is set by the user via the calendar picker in the top-left corner of the screen (See Figure 1). By default, this is set to the current date. For example, if you have run a search, and there are 3 aircraft returned in your results with ages, 5yrs, 4yrs, and 3yrs. If you set the Query Date back 12months, then the age of the aircraft in your results will change to 4yrs, 3yrs, and 2yrs.

Figure 1. The date picker on the Aircraft Page.