Seventy percent of the 450 business aircraft operators surveyed by JetNet iQ to date this quarter believe the current market cycle is now past the low point, managing director Rollie Vincent said yesterday at the annual JetNet IQ Summit in White Plains, New York. “In seven and a half years of doing this work, we’ve never seen stronger numbers,” he told the audience. “We’ve been in the doldrums the past several years, but we’re very optimistic about what we are seeing.”

Paul Cardarelli, JetNet’s v-p of sales, noted that the percentage of jets on the preowned market has declined from a high of nearly 18 percent in 2009 to just over 9 percent in the most recent data, indicating a switch from a buyers' to a sellers' market. Cardarelli estimates that 45 percent of the approximately 2,000 available preowned jets are antiquated aircraft and unlikely to sell, indicating that the young preowned inventory is evaporating.

Yet, the company noted, not all was positive. The approximately 4.5 million cycles by the U.S. business jet fleet last year were accomplished by more than 14,000 aircraft; in 2003, fewer than 9,000 business jets achieved that number of cycles. “This is something that gives us a bit of concern about business aviation,” said Cardarelli. “We’d like to see this [per-aircraft] utilization back where it once was.”