Fitted on the years before the hold-out, the survival curves predict roughly half again as many aircraft exits as were observed in it, so the retirements and replacement deliveries built on them probably run high.
What this shows: The chart covers 2015 to 2024. It plots Predicted (cohort survival, fitted before the hold-out) and Observed (airframes leaving the passenger fleet) on a vertical axis of Retirements per year (airframes). Latest values: Predicted (cohort survival, fitted before the hold-out) 285.7; Observed (airframes leaving the passenger fleet) 187.
Conditions and method
Status: descriptive (the survival model predicts more exits than happened over the held-out years, so the retirements it feeds into the fleet projection are probably too high).
An observed exit is an aircraft of the 2014 fleet that stopped being filed during 2015-2024. An aircraft filed again under another tail number has not left; one converted to a freighter has left the passenger fleet. An exit is not a confirmed scrapping: a sale abroad counts. At least 846 of the 2,241 observed exits are genuine withdrawals.
The ratio of predicted to observed exits differs widely by category, from 0.94 (large single-aisle) to 2.74 (regional jet).
Observed exits in 2020 and 2021 (311) were below those of 2018 and 2019 (355), while the predicted exits rose (700 against 683): the survival curves do not capture a pandemic effect on exits.