Current Trends in Business Aircraft Sales

At last month’s NBAA-BACE trade show Rollie Vincent of JetNetIQ presented the latest data on both used private jet sales and the forecast for new aircraft sales. Overall, the pre-owned market is coming closer to rebalancing, while the order books for new aircraft remain at high levels of over $50bn.

Pre-Owned Business Jet Market

The unit sales in the pre-owned market are three to four times that of the new market, making it a faster-moving segment. This pre-owned market showed a peak in 2021 with 3600-3700 aircraft sold, but we’re currently in a rebalancing phase.

The pre-owned inventory for sale is the red line in the graph below, and was at 1,873 aircraft at August 2024. The pre-owned retail transactions are shown by the blue line in the graph below, and is expected to total about 2,400 aircraft in 2024 - well down from that 2021 peak, but much more in line with a normal market.

Number of aircraft by type on the market varies from 4.5% (of the number in operation) for turboprops up to 9.7% for midsize jets. In other words, of all the pre-owned midsize jets that are flying today, almost 10% are available for sale. 

Forecast Sales of New Aircraft

For the ten-year period 2024 to 2033, JetNetIQ is forecasting 8,600 new business jet deliveries worth $262bn and 4,300 turboprops worth $25bn. This represents a total of 12,900 business aircraft worth $287bn. On the jet side, this is similar to the recent forecast from Honeywell of 8,500 new business jets over the next ten years.

The backlog of orders for new aircraft is significant, with $50 billion in backlog for the top 5 OEM’s made up of Bombardier, Dassault Falcon, Embraer, Gulfstream and Textron Aviation. These orders are primarily in the light to mid-size segment. “We're sitting at $50 billion of backlog, and we've been there for three years,” said Rollie Vincent, adding “What's going on with delivery rates? Kind of flat. We'll see a little bit of a bump this year, but still, we're not clearing out the backlog.” This means that customers for new aircraft can still see wait times measured in two to three years, depending on the model.

In terms of how that order book breaks down among the top 5 aircraft OEM's:

• Gulfstream $19.1bn
• Bombardier $14.9bn
• Textron $7.5bn
• Dassault Falcon $5.1bn
• Embraer $4.6bn

Based on its recent survey data of business jet operators, JetNet identified and shared several key imperatives facing the business aviation industry. These were:

• Repairing the supply chains for both products and service - this continues to be a large issue across the industry, and aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capacity is still very challenging.
• Rebuilding the talent pipelines and retaining people - so really improving the focus on staff and attracting new people into the industry.
• Retooling for the next generation customer requirements - to some extent there is a younger generation of customers who are starting to fly privately.
• Readying for sustainability.