Insight – The US market for sub-500 Miles flights

The growing interest in eVTOLs is driving a lot of market research.  Fortunately, the US has scads of data on air travel – probably the world’s finest and most detailed.  Analyzing the data allows one to understand market sizing and opportunities.  Here’s a look at the sub-500-mile market in the United States.  Note that this information is not only of interest to the eVTOL crowd – it has the same value to operators of regional aircraft. Let’s look at the US market for sub-500 Miles flights.

Let’s start with the market size. The first thing to note is the trend is not great.  The number of flights has been declining steadily for some time.  The 2022 data is through May and is not a reflection of the whole year. A second item to note is that the geographic size of the US market is NOT a driving issue here.  A sub-500 mile stage length is more likely to be driven by the number of large communities that require travel to smaller communities within the range.  Essentially, in the US case, hub airports.