The UAE Has More Aviation Companies Per Person Than the US

The United States has more aviation companies than any other country. Our aviation directory lists 3,597 of them. But per person, the US is not first.

The United Arab Emirates has 15.9 aviation companies for every million people. The US has 10.6. New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore, Ireland and Greece also beat the US. Germany, a big name in aerospace, has just 2.9 per million.

We wanted to see where aviation business is packed most tightly. So we took the company count for each country from The Flying Engineer aviation directory. Then we divided it by the population of that country. The answers surprised us.

The top 10 countries, per million people

We ranked only countries with at least 20 companies. Small counts can swing a lot, so this keeps the list fair.

Rank	Country	Aviation companies	Population (2024)	Companies per million people
1	United Arab Emirates	175	10,986,400	15.9
2	New Zealand	80	5,290,000	15.1
3	Switzerland	117	9,005,582	13.0
4	Singapore	75	6,036,860	12.4
5	Ireland	65	5,395,790	12.0
6	Greece	112	10,405,134	10.8
7	United States	3,597	340,003,797	10.6
8	United Kingdom	629	69,281,000	9.1
9	Australia	226	27,194,286	8.3
10	Canada	326	41,262,329	7.9

The UAE has about one and a half times the US rate. New Zealand is close behind the UAE. Both have fewer than 11 million people.

You can see the full lists on our pages for aviation companies in the UAE and aviation companies in New Zealand.

Greece beats Italy by more than five times

Greece is the big surprise on the list. It has 112 companies. Italy has 118. The two numbers are almost the same. But Italy has more than five times as many people.

So Greece has 10.8 companies per million people. Italy has 2.0. The Greek rate is more than five times the Italian rate.

Where do the Greek companies come from? Ground handling is a big part of it. Ground handling means the work done around a plane on the ground, such as loading bags and guiding the aircraft in.

Our page for ground handling in Greece lists 89 companies. Only the US has more. You can browse them all on our Greece country page.

Big aerospace countries rank lower

Some countries build a lot of aircraft. You might expect them to top a list like this. They do not.

Country	Aviation companies	Population (2024)	Companies per million people
France	313	68,551,653	4.6
Germany	246	83,516,593	2.9
Italy	118	58,952,704	2.0

Germany has 2.9 companies per million people. That is less than a third of the US rate.

Switzerland, right next door, has 13.0. That is more than four times the German rate.

France and Italy also sit well below the US. Building many aircraft does not mean having many aviation companies for each person.

Tiny places with huge rates

We left countries and territories with fewer than 20 companies out of the ranking. One new listing can move their rate a lot.

Monaco has 38,631 people. That works out to 207 companies per million. The British Virgin Islands come to 177 per million. Iceland is at 28 and Luxembourg at 22.

These numbers are real. But they are too small to compare fairly with large countries.

What this means when you look for a supplier

A high rate does not mean better service. It means a country has many aviation companies for its size. That can make it easier to find a choice close to home.

To see who is listed in a country, search the company directory. You can filter by country, then by service.

Source: company counts from the country filter of The Flying Engineer aviation directory, read 22 October 2026. Population figures from the World Bank (indicator SP.POP.TOTL, 2024 values). Rates are rounded to one decimal place.

Photo: Robert Linsdell, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons