A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

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Curt Epstein

Honeywell Aerospace’s latest forecast calls for the delivery of 8,500 new business jets worth $280 billion over the next decade. The Arizona-based engine and avionics maker released the results from its 33rd annual Global Business Aviation Outlook on Sunday night on the eve of NBAA’s Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Las Vegas.
The number of jet deliveries it expects in the 2032/2033 timeframe remains unchanged from last year’s prognostication, reaching the 900-per-year unit plateau for the first time since 2008. However, the value has increased slightly.
To gather its results for the 10-year forecast, Honeywell surveyed 375 non-fractional operators representing 1,488 business aircraft worldwide. For the first half of the decade, purchase plans remained on par with those reported in last year's survey, indicating demand for new aircraft is stabilizing above pre-pandemic levels.
The survey anticipates that large cabin jets will account for one-third of the delivery total and two-thirds of the revenue value over the next five years.
“The business aviation industry is in a prolonged period of healthy growth, and we don’t see that positive trend changing any time soon,” said Heath Patrick, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies’ president for the Americas aftermarket. “Business aviation continues to see more users and, as a result, manufacturers are ramping up production to keep pace with growing demand, a trend we expect to continue for the foreseeable future.”
For 2025, the forecast calls for deliveries to increase by 12% over this year’s anticipated total of 750 jets.
“We were a little hampered between 2020 and 2023 because of supply chain constraints,” added Kevin Schwab, a systems engineer with Honeywell and lead analyst on this year’s survey. “We’re seeing some improvements in the supply chain, and that is enabling the OEMs to have these production rate increases.” Next year, the company predicts 16% more business jet deliveries than in pre-Covid 2019.
In terms of where those aircraft will go over the next half-decade, North America is expected to receive two-thirds of the total, followed by 13% to Europe, 10% to Latin America, 7% to Asia Pacific, and the remaining 3% to the Middle East.
The survey asked operators about their anticipated flight activity in 2025, and an overwhelming 90% indicated they expected to fly the same or more than they did this year, echoing last year’s results and indicating continued optimism in the post-Covid period.
“The reduction in barriers to access business aviation in recent years, driven by the introduction of new shared access models, has enabled a persistent flow of new customers opting for business aviation alternatives for their travel needs,” the report stated.
Honeywell noted an uptick in flight activity in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, which Schwab believes correlates to increased near-term aircraft purchase plans there.
New to this year’s survey, Honeywell asked operators to rank their aircraft purchase drivers for the first time. “We had 37 different individual drivers of purchase decisions, and we bucketed those into six different categories,” explained Schwab.
“About 82% of the operators said that performance is in their top three priorities when they go to buy a new jet, and 60% said that cost was in their top three,” Schwab added. Range was the overall individual purchase driver, according to the respondents, followed by direct operating cost, maximum payload, field performance, and speed.
While the preowned aircraft market has cooled somewhat since the record low inventories of 2021 and 2022, Honeywell noted used jet values remain strong compared with those of the previous decade. The report predicts that while the inventory should continue to slowly rise, prices should remain stable. Operators in the survey noted they expect to rely more heavily on the pre-owned market to expand their fleets than in previous years.
Sustainability was another topic touched on by the survey this year, with 85% indicating they view the acquisition of new, more fuel-efficient aircraft as the most effective method to reduce environmental impact.
Among those respondents who indicated they are proactively looking to reduce their carbon footprint, 55% said the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) figures into their efforts. When the survey respondents were asked what they viewed as the top hurdles to industry adoption of SAF, cost was the most mentioned, followed by availability.
Schwab told AIN he was surprised by operators still citing risks to aircraft reliability, lack of environmental impact, and lack of awareness as hurdles. While those weren’t at the top of the list, he suggested that there is still a great need for further industry education on the use and benefits of SAF.

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