Airliners and general aviation, as types
Civil aviation is two ramps that share a code system and almost nothing else. Airliners move people and freight on published routes. General aviation is everything else with a civil certificate: training, personal travel, utility work, and business flying. This note walks the classes on both ramps, the production lines inside them, and the makers behind them.
Airliners: four classes
Narrowbody. One aisle, roughly 130 to 200 seats, sectors from one to six hours. This is the workhorse class of world aviation, and it belongs to two families: the Boeing 737 (in its NG and MAX generations) and the Airbus A320 family (A319, A320, A321, in ceo and neo form). The 737-800 (B738) and A320neo (A20N) are the types you will meet most often in US service. The class also holds military derivatives built on airliner airframes: the P-8A Poseidon is a 737 at heart.
Widebody. Two aisles, roughly 250 seats and up, built for long haul. The current generation is composite: the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 burn less fuel per seat than the types they replaced, and their wings are visibly different, long and heavily swept with elegant tips. The 777 remains the big twin of the class, and the A330neo continues the older Airbus widebody line. The 747 and A380 lines are closed; both types still fly, but the four-engine era is over. Freighters and tankers live here too: the 767-300F and the KC-46A are 767s.
Regional jet. Fifty to a hundred seats on thinner city pairs. Embraer's E-Jets (E170 through E195, and the E2 generation) define the class today. The CRJ line, inherited from Bombardier and now closed, still fills regional ramps across North America.
Turboprop airliner. Propellers, not jets, on sectors up to about ninety minutes. The ATR 72 and the De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400 (Q400) are the class. A turboprop burns markedly less fuel on a short sector than any jet, which is why the class survives every fuel-price cycle.
The airliner makers and their lines
Boeing's line runs 737, 767, 777, 787, with the 737 carrying the volume since 1967. Airbus answers with the A320 family, the A330neo, and the A350. Embraer owns the regional jet market that Bombardier exited. ATR, a Franco-Italian joint venture, owns the turboprop airliner class alongside De Havilland Canada's Q400 and the evergreen Twin Otter. Reading a ramp is mostly reading these five names.
General aviation: six classes
Piston single. The training and personal fleet. The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is the most-produced aircraft type in history; the Cirrus SR22, with its whole-airframe parachute, is the best-selling piston single of this century; the Piper PA-28 family taught generations of pilots. One engine, four seats or fewer in most cases, no pressurization.
Piston twin. Two piston engines for redundancy and payload: the Beechcraft Baron, Piper Seneca, and Diamond DA42. Once the standard step up from a single, now a smaller class as efficient singles and turbines took its role.
Turboprop GA. Turbine power on a propeller: the Beechcraft King Air line (90, 200, 350), the Pilatus PC-12, the Cessna Caravan, the Daher TBM. Pressurized, weather-capable, and happy on short strips. The King Air 200 (BE20) has been in continuous production since 1974.
Very light and light jet. Entry jets: the Cirrus Vision Jet with one engine, the Embraer Phenom 100 and 300, the Citation M2 and CJ family, the HondaJet. Owner-flown or single-pilot charter, four to eight seats.
Midsize jet. Transcontinental cabins: the Citation Latitude, Embraer Praetor 500 and 600, and their peers. Two crew, eight to nine passengers, coast to coast.
Large business jet. Intercontinental cabins: Gulfstream's G-series (the G650, GLF6, is the reference type), Bombardier's Global line, Dassault's Falcon 7X and 8X. Twelve-plus hours of range, stand-up cabins, and price tags that read like narrowbody airliners.
The GA makers
Textron Aviation owns two historic names, Cessna and Beechcraft, and with them the Skyhawk, the Caravan, the King Air, and the Citation line. Piper and Cirrus split much of the piston single market between tradition and composites. Diamond builds the DA line. Pilatus builds the PC-12 and PC-24 in Switzerland; Daher builds the TBM in France. At the top, Gulfstream, Bombardier, Dassault, and Embraer Executive Jets divide the business jet classes by cabin size and range.
What actually separates the classes
Propulsion is the first divider: piston, turboprop, or jet. Pressurization is the second: it decides whether the aircraft can live in the flight levels above the weather. Range is the third: pattern work, regional, transcontinental, or intercontinental. The fourth is the operating model: owner-flown, charter, fractional, or airline. A King Air and a 737-800 are both twin-engine turbine aircraft; everything else about them, from runway needs to who pays for the fuel, is different. The class words compress those four dividers into one label, and that is why they are worth learning.
Aerolex is Zorost's public aircraft type encyclopedia: zorost.com/aerolex. AeroFarr is Zorost's aviation intelligence platform: aerofarr.com.
Previous: How aircraft types are classed. Next: Helicopters, fighters, and attack types.