The business aircraft market is normalizing and that might be good

Sometimes good news comes in different forms depending on your circumstances. For the preowned business aircraft market, the best news of 2023 came in the latter part of the year.

While the overall retail jet transactions were just under 100 fewer than in 2019, which is a solid baseline, they were well within the 95% confidence band. That is good news considering that in the first eight months of 2023, the transactions were well below the 95% confidence band.

Our methodology was to analyze retail jet transactions for whole aircraft for years starting in 2012 up to and including 2023. We ran the numbers both with and without 2021 and 2022. Those years were well above normal, and almost everyone would agree they were outliers.

Without those two years, we were only 50 fewer transactions than the mean in the period and 70 above the lower confidence band. Including the go-go years of 2021 and 2022, we were 200 below the mean but still 15 above the lower band.

We feel removing the outlier years is important to accurately analyze the market. The bottom line is the market is still healthy and performing within historic norms. To many people, it feels slow due to how the mind references what was the most recent. But for those who have been around for many years, this should feel normal.

As more inventory comes on the market we will continue to see the market return to a normal balance of buyers and sellers. For the long-term health of the market, this is good. Peaks feel good; valleys feel bad, but normal is healthy.

Prices will adjust to market conditions of inventory availability and demand. Some models will adjust more due to slower demand like age and maintenance costs, among other factors. However, this is normal. We see most models reverting to their historic price depreciation per year.

2024 will have challenges. It appears that the chances of a recession are low and even if we have one, it will be soft and short-lived. The world is precarious right now and that is always an unknown in how military conflict can disrupt the aviation market. Contentious US presidential elections can provide a reason to delay such high-dollar decisions; however, the data do not support that they have much overall effect.

There are challenges at the beginning of every year. It seems the more there are challenges the more important being able to quickly respond in person to meet those challenges becomes. Can any of those who use private aviation think about how they could have been successful in their business the last few years without their planes?

Obviously, the growth of fractional, time cards and retail activity are great indicators of how important private business flying is to getting business done, and that is good news.