This post aims to explain how end-of-life commercial aircraft retirements are determined in the Cirium data research process.
NOTE: A separate Knowledge Base article explains how the Fleets Analyzer Projection feature determines future retirements using a non-researched based approach.Continue reading
When using the Projections tab within Fleets Analyzer, and showing Retirement events, you may notice a large number of events during the current period (month, quarter, year), along with a corresponding drop in the number of in-service aircraft.
When there is no known retirement date for an aircraft, under the Projections tab, a basic retirements model is used. The model uses the following rules:Continue reading
To standardise our taxonomy for the A330 type, we have amended the Master Series for the A330neo types from the generic A330neo to the relevant A330-800neo and A330-900neo.
Please be aware that any Saved Searches that include the A330neo as a filter option may need to be updated.
During the peak period of commercial aircraft being placed into storage as a result of COVID-19 (March), we applied a “default” return to service of 30 September 2020. At that time, it was very much unknown what the lasting impact would be of the pandemic, but, from observing the fleet activities of the last few months, we have now started to review any remaining scheduled return to service dates. In reviewing the scheduled return dates until the end of the year, we have applied the following logic:Continue reading
Based on customer feedback, we are making a series of OEM name changes to bring our data up to date with our policy of reflecting the current support OEM. These name changes will be implemented in Fleets Analyzer from 8 July.
IMPORTANT: if you have Saved Searches that contain the aircraft types or manufacturers listed in the table below, then please open your Saved Search (after 2pm 8th July – UK time) and update if necessary.
| Aircraft Type | Old Manufacturer | New Manufacturer |
| DHC-8 | Bombardier (De Havilland) | De Havilland Canada |
| DHC-4 | Bombardier (De Havilland) | Viking Air |
| Convair 540 | Bombardier (Canadair) | General Dynamics |
| Convair 580 | Bombardier (Canadair) | General Dynamics |
| Kodiak | Quest | Daher |
| SC.7 Skyvan | Bombardier (Shorts) | Viking Air |
| Short 330 | Bombardier (Shorts) | Viking Air |
| Short 360 | Bombardier (Shorts) | Viking Air |
| Tucano | Bombardier (Shorts) | Embraer |
As the Covid-19 Pandemic continues to impact the Aviation industry and in particular commercial passenger services we are making some further adjustments to how we track the ongoing usage of aircraft.Continue reading
As of June 1st 2020 Cirium will be making a further adjustment to best reflect the current in service and stored fleets. However, we will not be retrospectively applying the new storage and in service classifications to data prior to June 1st 2020.
Aircraft will now be reflected as entering storage if any of the following criteria are met:Continue reading
The world of business aviation has always had a degree of secrecy about certain elements of it, and nowhere is that more obvious than in order data.
Order dates for business aviation shown in Fleets Analyser tend to come in two different types. There are known orders – which are a minority – where a major operator has made a multi aircraft order that the OEM in question is happy to publicise, and then there are the unknown orders which tend to be small and single aircraft orders where non-disclosure agreements are commonplace.
Based on customer feedback, we have introduced a new type of ‘usage’ to our database. The new usage is ‘Spares Use / Parts Reclamation’.
This usage will be applied to aircraft when those aircraft have been acquired by a company/military air arm purely for spares use (sometimes referred to as “non-fliers” or “donor” airframes).
This new usage will always be applied to aircraft that are in storage, and would typically be followed by a retirement event.
This new usage will initially only be applied on our business aviation, helicopter and military datasets, as well as military operated examples of types in our commercial dataset.
As we have been getting plenty of interest in our storage data, we thought it would be useful to provide an update on how we are processing this data in line with the latest trends and patterns we are seeing from our tracking data.Continue reading
What you can expect to find here: tips for users to get the most out of Fleets Analyzer, tricks for power users who are already in the know, product updates including sneak peeks and new features, and news about new data sets and taxonomy changes.
