Business aircraft transactions weren’t as robust in the third quarter as they were a year agio, but sales activity nevertheless remained strong. That's according to the International Aircraft Dealers Association’s (IADA, Booth 1268) quarterly Market Report, which was released Tuesday at NBAA-BACE 2022. In the three months that ended September 30, IADA dealers reported 331 closed sales transactions versus 340 in the same period last year.

Year-to-date, dealers have completed 929 deals, an increase of nearly 7 percent from the 869 closed during the same time last year. More than 60 percent of the deals were cash transactions.

“As of last year, we did about 46 percent of all transactions with only 12 percent of the dealers,” IADA executive director Wayne Starling told AIN. “We’re up to 14, maybe 15, percent [of dealers] now. We expect it to be probably somewhere right around 50 percent of transactions by the end of the year. So we have the people that are making things happen.”

During the third quarter, new acquisition agreements totaled 162 versus 190 in the same period last year. Thirty-one sellers lowered their price in the most recent three-month period and 42 deals fell apart, compared with seven lowering their price and 40 deal collapses in third-quarter 2021.

The fourth quarter should be stronger in terms of closed deals, Starling said. That’s because of the ending of 100 percent bonus depreciation in the U.S. at year-end and a struggling airline industry that “continues to be the best salespeople for us. On top of that, so many people are buying that [people say], ‘My buddy got one, so why shouldn’t I?’ I mean, they run in the same circles. And…we’re getting those kinds of calls.”

Starling also noted that 50 percent of buyers never owned an airplane before. “One of the things helping drive [sales is] that is there’s no charter capacity and there’s limited [jet] card capacity.”