North American business aircraft owner/operators are showing optimism about the economy for the first time in nearly two years, according to the results from the third-quarter JetNet iQ survey. Rolland Vincent, the survey’s founder and director and head of Rolland Vincent Associates, presented the results this afternoon at the annual JetNet iQ Summit.
“We finally saw that the U.S. owner/operator community’s optimism has picked up, and we’ve been waiting basically six or seven quarters for that,” said Vincent. “The mood was getting a little dark and going against the trend we saw everywhere else in the world.”
This latest survey—the company’s 50th since it began querying operators in 2011—shows that nearly 56 percent of respondents believe market conditions are past the low point for business aviation, and Vincent suggested the lull resulted from lagging business confidence driven by higher interest rates and inflation.
Coming out of the Covid pandemic and its strong stimulus in demand for private flight, the preowned aircraft market is stabilizing as inventories slowly increase.
As of mid-2023, order backlogs among the five major business jet manufacturers exceeded $50 billion, equating to more than 18 months of production across most models. While OEM book-to-bills have slipped slightly recently, they are still in most cases above 1:1 with the exception of Embraer which is near 2:1. Supply-chain issues continue to constrain production, Vincent noted.
In its latest industry forecast, the company calls for deliveries of 8,684 new business jets over the next decade with a value of $268 billion. That represents an increase of 284 jets over last year’s forecast. “The major change has been a shift in production to the latter half of our 10-year outlook because we are seeing consistent delays in certification of new aircraft,” Vincent told AIN. “The reality is it’s just harder and longer to certify an aircraft than it ever was before, and it’s affecting the entire OEM industry.”
By 2032, the global private fleet is expected to total 28,362 jets, after the retirement of nearly 3,800 aircraft.
In this latest survey, Vincent also noted a strong boost in the respondents’ awareness of and willingness to use sustainable aviation fuel. Since the question was last asked in 2019, there has been a 76 percent boost in positive responses.