How many Part 135 operators are in each state?

There are 1,884 active Part 135 on-demand charter operators in the United States and Puerto Rico, spread across 46 states plus Puerto Rico. The distribution is not even: Alaska alone accounts for 303 operators — more than Florida and California combined — because the state's road network makes air transportation economically necessary in a way it is not anywhere else in the country.

The numbers below come from the FAA Part 135 certificate-holder registry, refreshed periodically from the official FAA xlsx. They count certificated operators, not aircraft or tail numbers. A fleet of 12 jets under one certificate counts as one operator; a single-engine bush plane under its own certificate also counts as one.

Complete count by state

Sorted by operator count, largest to smallest. Clicking a state name opens a full operator list with FAA certificate numbers and fleet sizes.

Why Alaska has so many Part 135 operators

Alaska's 303 Part 135 operators represent 16% of the national total despite containing less than 0.25% of the US population. The explanation is geographic: roughly 80% of Alaskan communities have no road access at all, which makes on-demand air transportation a basic utility rather than a luxury service. Bush operators running Cessna 207s and Piper Navajos to remote villages are certificated under Part 135 just as a Citation X charter company would be in Florida.

The practical implication for anyone buying this data for research or outreach: the Alaska pool skews toward small, single-aircraft operators with minimal fleet size. The Florida and California pools skew toward larger operators with 5+ aircraft. Both segments are included in the full dataset; the state CSV lets you filter to exactly the pool you need.

Who uses this data

The FAA Part 135 operator list is useful in several distinct research contexts:

• Aviation insurance underwriters use it to cross-check the size of the addressable market for hull and liability coverage in a given region, or to verify that a certificate holder appears in the active registry before binding a policy.
• Aviation legal counsel use it to identify the universe of certificated operators in a jurisdiction for regulatory analysis, litigation support, or due diligence on an acquisition.
• MRO suppliers and avionics vendors use it as a prospecting list — the fleet size column indicates approximate demand scale, and the certificate number provides a reference point for FAA records lookups.
• Charter aggregators and brokers use it to map coverage in specific markets, identify operators they are not yet working with, and benchmark the total available lift in a region.
• Software and compliance tool vendors — including competitors and potential partners — use it to understand the size and geographic distribution of their addressable market.

What the data includes (and does not include)

The dataset contains: operator name, FAA certificate number, state (derived from FSDO district office), fleet size (tail count from the aircraft registry), and certificate type (135 for all operators in this set).

It does not contain: email addresses, phone numbers, individual pilot records, specific aircraft N-numbers, or financial information. It is firmographic data only — company-level identifiers suitable for market research and list-building, not individual contact enrichment.

For individual operator contact information, the FAA Certificate Management System and individual operator websites are the authoritative sources. We do not sell or append contact data.

Download the data

The full 1,890-operator dataset is available as a CSV for $299. Individual state CSVs are available for $99 each, or any three states for $199. All CSVs are delivered automatically to your checkout email.