AIN Product Support Survey 2021, Part 1: Aircraft

For the third year in a row, Dassault Aviation held the top spot for business jets in BJT sister publication AIN's annual Product Support Survey. The French manufacturer of Falcon jets recorded this year’s highest overall average ratings of newer and older aircraft, with a score of 8.7 among jets based on results of AIN’s survey of aircraft operators, pilots, and maintainers.

Dassault’s 8.7 combined overall average rating is up from last year’s 8.3 and higher than the rating for Gulfstream Aerospace, which came in second for a third consecutive year based on its mid-cabin jet overall average score of 8.5. That leaves Embraer in third place with a score of 8.4.

In the turboprop results, AIN decided to break out the results of in-production and out-of-production aircraft (see Survey Rules and Methodology for more details). Pilatus recorded the top score for in-production turboprops with an overall average of 8.8, up 0.8 from last year’s score of 8.0 and a 2019 score of 8.3. The out-of-production Mitsubishi MU-2 turboprop recorded a strong overall average score of 9.1, up slightly from 9.0 last year.

In comments to AIN regarding improvements to product support over the past year, some manufacturers cited the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic on those efforts, although none reported interruptions in providing service and support to their customers.

For this year’s survey, there were 885 respondents who rated 2,671 aircraft broken down into 137 models. The minimum number of ratings required to include a manufacturer’s aircraft in the final results is 20.

Product Support Survey 2021, Part 1: Aircraft (729K)