NBAA Report: New Aircraft Sales Struggle As Private Jet Charter Surges

Private jet charter including jet cards and jet membership programs are a bright spot in business aviation

Honeywell has released its 26^th annual Business Aviation Outlook and it projects 8,300 new private jets will be delivered over the next 10 years at a value of $249 billion. It’s an interesting comparison to its pre-Recession forecast in 2007 which called for 14,000 net private jets to be delivered over the past decade worth $233 billion. 

Needless to say, the market didn’t make the volume number last time around, with actual deliveries only totaling about half of Honeywell’s projection. That said, the worst financial crisis in nearly a century did get in the way and one point of interest is that while unit volume still isn’t there, sales volume is actually expected to be higher.

Doing the numbers, if Honeywell projections are to be believed, the average new business jet in the next decade will sell for $30 million compared to an expectation of $16.6 million back in 2007. It reflects the trend towards larger, big cabin jets that can fly further, faster.

Separately, Aviation International News published its 2017 Charter Report showing private charter travel, including jet cards and membership programs, increased by 10% in flights and over 12% in hours, showing customers are not only flying more, but flying on longer flights.