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Understanding "Ferry Flights"

July 14, 2023

The massive expansion of private luxury jet hangars at Hanscom Field has been argued by the project proponents to decrease jet flights rather than increase them as common sense would expect. This is based on the theory that a significant fraction of flights today are what is called “ferry flights” due to an incapacity to store or house them at Hanscom. No data has been provided to support these claims. This document describes what kinds of ferry flights exist and how they should be examined to determine the veracity of any claimed decrease in flights.

A Ferry flight is the flight of an aircraft without passengers for the purpose of returning to base, delivery to a customer, moving from one base of operations to another, or moving to or from a maintenance facility for maintenance, repair, and operations. For purposes of understanding how hangar capacity at Hanscom affects ferry flights, only a subset of ferry flights applies.

The only ferry flights related to hangar capacity are those which would have been avoided if Hanscom had the capacity to accommodate the aircraft, which is only a fraction of total ferry flights. Examples help illustrate the different types of ferry flights and which are related to hangar capacity:

  1. A time-share flight drops off a person at Hanscom, and then receives instruction to pick someone up at Logan. This results in a ferry flight to Logan. Extra hangar space at Hanscom would not change this ferry flight.
  2. A time-share flight drops off a person at Logan, and then receives instruction to pick someone up at Hanscom. This results in a ferry flight to Hanscom. Extra hangar space at Hanscom would not change this ferry flight.
  3. A privately owned aircraft based elsewhere occasionally drops off a person at Hanscom, who intends to stay for a while. The aircraft may be needed for another purpose and returns to home base at its airport base. It returns later to pick up, resulting in two ferry flights for the round trip. Extra hangar space at Hanscom would not change these ferry flights.
  4. A privately owned aircraft routinely flies the same passenger(s) from Hanscom, but there is no capacity to store the plane at Hanscom. The jet has a home base in Portsmouth (or some other regional jetport). For each flight it ferries from Portsmouth to Hanscom to pick up; when the passenger returns to Hanscom, the jet ferries back to Portsmouth. If there was available hangar space at Hanscom this aircraft could be based at Hanscom, avoiding two ferry flights per round trip.
  5. A privately owned aircraft routinely flies the same passenger from Logan, but there is no capacity to store the plane at Logan. The jet has a home base at Hanscom. For each flight it ferries to Logan to pick up, and when the passenger returns to Logan, the jet ferries back to Hanscom. Extra hangar space at Hanscom would actually increase this type of ferry flight.

These examples show that many types of ferry flights are not affected by Hanscom hangar capacity. The only type of ferry flight that might decrease with hangar capacity is the subset, identified as #4 above, which we will refer to as “Hanscom incapacity ferry flights.”

Some types of ferry flights could increase with additional hangar capacity. If additional capacity is added at Hanscom it could serve as a base supplying ferry flights due to incapacity at Logan, Martha's Vinyard, or Nantucket-- which have limited capacity compared with the level of service. Such ferry flights using Hanscom are enabled by Hangar capacity.

There is no flight data which will directly identify Hanscom incapacity ferry flights. However, flight data patterns help identify which flights could be such flights. Some airports cannot be the destination of Hanscom incapacity ferry flights, because they are not a location conducive to storing an aircraft. It is highly unlikely that Logan, Nantucket, or Martha Vineyard would be a source of ferry flights due to Hanscom incapacity; these three airports have very limited capacity for private jets and are frequently overloaded.

Hanscom incapacity ferry flights supporting a particular aircraft are associated with a base airport from which that aircraft regularly ferries to and from Hanscom. The choice of such a base is nearby to save time and fuel. Presumably a base would be within 100 miles of Hanscom. It certainly could not be hours away. Such a base should also have available jet hangar capacity.

Some types of transient aircraft cannot be the source of Hanscom incapacity ferry flights such as time share service such as NetJets. These aircraft would not be based at Hanscom if there were additional capacity.

Hanscom incapacity ferry flights are an attribute of what are called “based aircraft;” which would exhibit a pattern of an aircraft with the same registration number having a repeated pattern over time of departing and arriving at Hanscom from the same regional airport. This data is available.

Any claims regarding Hanscom incapacity ferry flights must be based on historic flight records, using the criteria presented here. To date there has been no systematic analysis of historic data justifying any claims regarding the effect of hangar capacity on ferry flights. It is important to recognize that increasing hangar capacity could actually add ferry flights relating to Logan airport, impacting both Hanscom and Logan.

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