The largest business aviation operators in 2022, together with their flight hours for 2022 and 2021 are listed and discussed below - the data is courtesy of ARGUS. The list is a mix of fractional operators and charter operators.
Largest Business Aviation Operators
| Operator | 2022 Hours | 2021 Hours |
| NetJets | 511,224 | 478,444 |
| Flexjet | 183,548 | 178,053 |
| Wheels Up | 159,357 | 166,805 |
| Executive Jet Management | 75,407 | 62,681 |
| Exclusive Jets | 56,602 | 43,067 |
| Solairus Aviation | 49,983 | 39,687 |
| PlaneSense | 44,593 | 42,907 |
| XO Jet | 39,524 | 55,325 |
| Jet Linx | 35,676 | 42,284 |
| Jet Edge | 29,782 | 32,403 |
Fractional provider NetJets was by far the largest business aviation operator in 2022, flying over 511,000 hours. Fractional provider Flexjet was the second largest operator with over 183,00 flying hours. Both companies saw good growth in flight hours and both have been adding and continue to add significant numbers of new aircraft to their extensive fleets. Flexjet recently announced plans to go public through a SPAC deal.
Wheels Up was the third largest operator with over 159,000 flight hours in 2022. The company has grown rapidly over the last few years, with a series of acquisitions and went public in 2021, being traded on the NYSE under the symbol "UP".
Executive Jet Management is owned by Netjets and manages whole aircraft on behalf of owners. It also charters out these aircraft for the owners and Netjets uses these planes for supplemental lift for their fractional owners.
Fifth placed charter operator Solairus Aviation saw tremendous growth of over 25% in the number of hours flown in 2022 compared to 2021.
PlaneSense is the third largest fractional operator and sixth overall in 2022 flight numbers. It operates both the Pilatus PC-12 turbo-prop and has more recently built out a fleet of Pilatus PC-24 light jets.
Exclusive Jets, (operating as flyExclusive), has been one of the most rapidly growing private aviation charter operators over the last few years, with a fleet of mainly Citation aircraft. In 2022 it announced plans to add fractional shares in the Citation CJ3+, and has said it plans to go public in 2023.
XO Jet and Jet Edge are both owned by Vista Global Holdings, which also owns VistaJet. Charter operator and management company Jet Edge was just added to this group in 2022.
Charter operator and management company Jet Linx has multiple bases across the US. Like several operators it had put new sales of its jet card product on hold in 2021, due to the high demand and to preserve service levels for current holders - new card sales resumed in early 2022.
This article shows the record number of private flights in 2022 and compares the flight numbers to 2021, 2020 and 2019.
See these earlier articles for the largest fractional aircraft companies in 2021 and the largest charter aircraft operators in 2021.