An African airline has the fifth youngest fleet of aircraft in the world, aviation database and news company ch-aviation has reported, in its 'World’s Youngest Aircraft Fleet 2023' award report, released on Tuesday. The report uses data that was valid on December 31 last year. Any operators with fewer than five aircraft were excluded from the survey. VIP-configured aircraft were also excluded from the survey. 

The African carrier is Uganda Airlines, whose airliners have an average age of 3.01 years. The airline with the youngest fleet in the world, and so the winner of ch-aviation’s World’s Youngest Aircraft Fleet Award 2023, is Taiwan’s Starlux Airlines, with an average aircraft age of just 1.22 years. The other three airlines in the top five are Saudi Arabian carrier flyadeal (second, with an average aircraft age of 2.56 years), Canada’s Lynx Air (third, 2.9 years), and Chile’s SKY Airline (fourth, 2.94 years).

However, these are all small or relatively small airlines. Starlux has a fleet of 18 aircraft, flyadeal has 27 airliners, Lynx Air has just six. SKY is the biggest, with 28, while Uganda Airlines also has just six aircraft.

Consequently, the report has a sub-category of youngest airliner fleets among operators with more than 100 aircraft in their fleets. This category is led by 297-aircraft Indian airline IndiGo, with an average aircraft age of 3.57 years. Hungary’s Wizz Air (169 aircraft) is in second place (4.31 years), followed by US carrier Frontier Airlines (119 aircraft, average age 4.52 years), then Mexico’s Volaris (116 airliners; 5.49 years) and in fifth place, 119-aircraft Spring Airlines, of China, with an average aircraft age of 6.68 years.

There are also regional subcategories, for the youngest airliner fleets in each of the world’s continents, plus the region of Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific island countries). No South African airline appears in the top five youngest African airliner fleets.

Uganda Airlines is of course in number one spot in Africa. In second place, with an average aircraft age of 4.38 years, is Kenya’s Jambojet, followed by Air Tanzania (5.66 years), Air Seychelles (6.14 years) and Air Austral of Reunion (6.71 years). However, all of them operate small fleets of aircraft – Jambojet has seven airliners, Air Tanzania has 12, Air Seychelles has seven, and Air Austral, ten.

“ch-aviation’s Youngest Fleet Award recognises airlines dedicated to keeping their fleet young and using new generation aircraft,” highlighted company CEO Thomas Jaeger. “This subject is extremely important to all of us in the industry and the whole world because CO₂ emissions are a global issue affecting us all. We at ch-aviation believe it is critical to recognise those airlines that truly work hard toward fixing this problem by keeping their fleets young because they’re the ones that make a difference.”