Industry data provider JetNet released the results of its just-closed third-quarter JetNet iQ survey on Tuesday at NBAA 2018, finding the industry in a recovery—but a cautious one.
Among the areas the company is watching is fleet utilization. Paul Cardarelli, the Utica, N.Y. based company’s vice president of sales, said the industry is on pace for approximately 4.5 million cycles this year on a fleet of more than 14,000 aircraft. “We were doing the same thing in 2004, with a little bit north of 9,000 aircraft, so we’re flying the airplanes roughly about a third less than we did back then, and that’s a concern we see. We think that business aviation is going to flourish when we’re really using those assets as much as we can and certainly as much as we did in the past.”
The company has tracked the declining preowned inventory as prices have begun to stabilize. “That’s really where we see the recovery today,” Cardarelli said, adding that JetNet currently sees the greatest disparity between inventory and the number of aircraft for sale. “So it’s trending to be an increasingly strengthening seller's market, so we think that is overall a positive momentum item.”
According to JetNet, the percentage of the fleet that is available for sale has declined continually from April 2017 when it was 11.3 percent, to the present when it is below 9 percent. Prevailing wisdom has set 10 percent fleet availability as the divider between a seller's and a buyer's market.
Rolland Vincent, managing director of JetNet iQ (Booth 4449) and president of industry consultancy Rolland Vincent Associates, reviewed data from the just-concluded third-quarter JetNet survey, which found a large degree of market optimism. Currently, 69 percent of the more than 500 respondents from 130 countries believe that the current business cycle has passed the low point, a large jump from the 49 percent who responded positively a year ago.
In the second quarter, the survey recorded its highest level of net optimism (the percentage of those who believe industry is past the low point minus those who believe it has not yet reached the low point) since the survey was founded in 2011. That figure was 55.1 percent.
The third quarter results, however, showed some slight softening of that optimism, which the company attributes in part to the upcoming highly contentious midterm elections in the U.S. and the ongoing threat of trade wars and resulting tariffs.
Vincent released the company’s updated forecast, which calls for deliveries of 7,807 business jets, worth an approximate $240 billion, through 2027. “If you go back, that 7,800 number looks very similar to the last few years, so we’re not talking about unit growth here, but we’re talking about significant value growth.” He noted that the average price of a new business jet today is around $30 million, more than double the average from 12 years ago.
