July 11, 2024
Private jet buyers are turning to professional dealers/brokers as inventory of late vintage preowned private jets remains slim, says JetNet IQ.
Deliveries of new private jets are expected to jump by 12.5% this year, buoyed partly by the scant inventory of newer vintage preowned private jets.
Research from JetNet IQ shows manufacturers are expected to deliver 820 units in 2024.
‘Buyers want people they trust, people who have been to the rodeo before.’
– Rollie Vincent, JetNet IQ
That would be the highest number of new private jets since 2009 when the number of aircraft fell from a record 1,317 in 2008 to just 874.
Since then, the high water mark was 809 deliveries in 2019.
According to the researcher Rollie Vincent of Rolland Vincent & Associates, the expectation is 845 units in 2025.
In 2023, the industry’s manufacturers pumped out 729 aircraft.
OEMs’ backlog increased to a record $50 billion last year, up $1 billion from 2023.
The number doesn’t include the over 2,000 options NetJets announced in the past year for new private jets it expects to buy over the next 15 years.
Vincent told a press conference during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition, known as EBACE that supply chain constraints continue to hamper growth.
“It takes tens of thousands of parts to make an airplane. But it only takes one or two to stop airplanes from being delivered,” he told journalists here in Geneva, Switzerland.
OEMs delivered 121 new jets in Q1 of 2024, traditionally the industry’s slowest quarter.
Gulfstream Aerospace led the way with 34 deliveries, followed by Bombardier with 32.
Embraer and Cirrus each delivered 23 jets in the year’s first quarter.
The latter’s SF50 Vision Jet led the way, accounting for its output.
Embraer’s top-selling Phenom 300E was second with 18 deliveries.
Bombardier delivered 15 Challenger 3500s, while Textron sent the same number of Citation Latitudes into service.
Dassault churned seven airframes, while Honda Aircraft delivered a pair of VLJs.
As of May 26, 2024, JetNet reported 24,195 jets and 16,241 turboprops in operation globally.
Of those numbers, 1,816 and 734 were for sale.
Vincent called the market “rebalancing” after inventory dropped into the 2% range during the Covid-led demand surge.
However, there is still a shortage of recent vintage, preowned aircraft on the market.
While 7.5% of jets and 4.5% of turboprops are for sale overall, only 33 jets and 14 turboprops five years old or less are for sale globally.
Of the aircraft currently on the market sign, only 321 jets and 141 turboprops were delivered since 2014.
A separate report released today by Global Jet Capital projects $193 billion in total new and pre-owned transaction volume between 2024 and 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.4 percent during that time.
Back to JetNet IQ, don’t believe what you read about disintermediation.
Vincent said current buyers, who saw friends burned by rushing or trying to do it themselves during the demand surge of 2021 and 2022, are mitigating risk by turning to professional brokers/dealers.
Since 2018, professional brokers/dealers as a source for market information jumped to first from ninth place, bypassing internet research, aviation consultants, conversations with OEMs, online databases, print and digital media, MROs, and word-of-mouth.
“Buyers want people they trust, people who have been to the rodeo before,” Vincent said.
Vincent also told the media that JetNet IQ respondents in North America and Europe have markedly different concerns.
While supply chain recovery ranked as the top concern in Europe and second in North America, sustainability issues ranked second in Europe yet didn’t make the top five in North America.
Likewise, the geo-political environment and conflicts were the third-highest concerns for European respondents but weren’t in the top five on the other side of the pond.
Attracting top talent is the biggest concern on the western edge of the North Atlantic, but only fourth in Europe.
There was also a significant gap in the likelihood of using Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF.
Some 58% of Europeans expect to use SAF in the next 24 months, compared to 32% in North America.
With aviation emissions under greater scrutiny in Europe, Vincent said it wasn’t surprising that North American respondents were more likely to recommend a career in industry than their counterparts here by a greater than 3-to-1 margin.
Despite the generally rosy outlook, Vincent warned the media that the industry is cyclical and apt to turn on a dime.
Surveying the past two decades, he said, “The industry has been through hell and high water and back.”
