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The fourth quarter for the business aviation market tends to be frenetic, and this one is no exception. But this time, there is a twist—the U.S. presidential election.
Companies and individuals trying to buy a new or used aircraft often want to close by the end of the year, which keeps OEMs, brokers, dealers, maintenance companies, bankers and lawyers very busy as they try to close these sales. They want to use calendar-year budgets and get tax credits, for example.
“People will be very tentative in the fourth quarter during presidential election years because of the unknown,” says Hunter Weiss, president of broker Welsch Aviation. “But no matter what, business will move forward, and all those people who were sitting on the fence will move forward to stay competitive.”
Jetcraft CEO Chad Anderson agrees and says dealers and brokers usually plan for a slowdown in U.S. election years. However, Anderson says: “I’m grateful to say that we’re still doing plenty of good-quality acquisitions for a lot of clients. The business environment for us is very brisk.”
While Ogarajets saw a bit of a slowdown in June, which is typical in the industry during the second quarter, the pace “made an abrupt turn in July,” says Johnny Foster, president and CEO of the aircraft brokerage and management company.
One different aspect in 2024 is that there are more used aircraft on the market than the past couple of years, which has restored a better supply-and-demand balance—and hence more normalized pricing.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s at a point of parity between buyers and sellers yet, but it has afforded the buyer the opportunity to be a bit more selective about quality supply,” Foster says, which also means being able to take more time to make informed decisions. “That was something all of us needed in the marketplace.”
Foster is seeing the sales activity picking up heavily as Q4 approaches. “Even with the elections in the U.S., he predicts “much of the same buying and feverish selling activity that we saw in the previous fourth quarters in 2023 and 2022,” says Foster.
Brian Proctor, president and CEO of Mente Group, agrees and says the activity he is seeing is “primarily right now buy-side driven, which is interesting, because the inventory levels seem to be increasing kind of across the board.” Given the index for inflation and today’s aircraft values, he believes it is a very good time to buy an aircraft.
One thing the election cycle is not affecting is the scarcity of available pre-buy inspection slots in the U.S. Getting a slot at a maintenance company still requires advanced booking. For this reason, some buyers in the U.S. are flying aircraft to other parts of the world for these inspections.
This is a brisk business aviation market.
With the National Business Aviation Association annual convention and the Middle East & North Africa Business Aviation Association show both happening this quarter, visit AviationWeek.com to keep up with the latest news.
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