NBAA Releases 2026 Compensation Survey Results for Business Aviation

The National Business Aviation Association has released the results of its 2026 Compensation Survey, a benchmarking report on salaries and benefits across the business aviation industry.

The report covers total cash compensation, including base pay, performance bonuses and overtime, along with merit increase trends projected for specialized aviation roles, long-term incentive structures, and scheduling practices such as duty and flight hours, weekend operations, and remain-overnight (RON) reporting.

NBAA member companies that participated in the survey receive complimentary access to the findings. Member representatives and designated compensation survey alternates at NBAA business and operating member companies that did not participate are eligible to purchase the full report.

Compensation surveys like this one belong to a recurring category of workforce benchmarking that trade associations produce to give member companies a common reference for pay decisions in a specialized labor market. Business aviation roles such as pilots, schedulers and maintenance technicians are difficult to benchmark through general labor-market data, so association-run surveys covering total cash compensation and scheduling practices such as remain-overnight (RON) reporting fill a gap that individual operators cannot easily fill alone.

How useful this benchmark proves will depend on participation depth and how operating companies apply the merit increase and long-term incentive data when setting next year's pay structures. Because access is tied to participation, whether non-participating member companies choose to purchase the full report will itself be a signal of how central this survey has become to compensation planning across the sector.