2025 Bizav Market Going Out Like a Lion

The business aviation sector is finishing out one of its strongest years in decades as new deliveries and backlogs flourish, flight hours show no sign of easing, and the preowned market remains strong, but rationalized.  And importantly, the industry has weathered through the turmoil that threatened to chill the market in the first quarter in the face of tariffs.

In October, aviation data and safety specialist Argus reported that business aviation flight activity had soared 5.3% year over year (YOY), making it the second-highest month since January 2007, when Argus began tracking business aircraft utilization. That month also marked the sixth positive month in a row in Europe, up 3.1%.

Demand has been strong across the board, according to Argus senior v-p, software Travis Kuhn. Fractional operations throughout the year have driven the robust flight activity, perhaps an indicator that new entrants in the market since Covid have remained, but Part 135 activity has strengthened with Part 91 edging up, showing positive signs of private flying and corporate flight department operations. “October did not disappoint from a flight activity standpoint,” Kuhn said.

But October was not an anomaly. Just a few months earlier, data specialist WingX noted that global business jet activity marked the busiest August in nearly two decades. The 327,745 flights worldwide in August represented 5%, 3% and 30% increases from the same months in 2024, 2022, and 2019, respectively. Keeping with the trend, fractional providers NetJets and Flexjet were the busiest operators for the month.

Flight hour strength bodes well for new and preowned transactions as fleets turn over and owners look to upgrade. Business jet deliveries have been up as supply chain constraints have allowed, but moreover, the major OEMs were seeing two-year backlogs throughout their product lines. This marks a significant turnaround from the pre-Covid market. In fact, Global Jet Capital estimated that backlogs are some 62.5% higher than they were pre-Covid.

“We’re seeing a very good and balanced market,” GJC CEO Vivek Kaushal told AIN. “Clearly, we turned the page coming out of Covid, and the story has just continued to build in this really nice and steady fashion.”

GJC anticipates new-production business jet deliveries will reach 779 this year, up from 746 in 2024, growing to 852 in 2029. “If you look at new deliveries of aircraft, we bottomed out at $14.2 billion in 2020, and that went up gradually to $19 billion by 2024. This year, we think we’re going to be at about $20 billion, and so if you look at that trough to peak ratio of about 50% or a little under 50%, that’s actually a Goldilocks kind of ratio from our perspective,” Kaushal said.

JetNet iQ, meanwhile, could see this year’s deliveries reaching 825 new business jets, up 8% year over year. If those deliveries play out, that would make 2025 the first year since pre-pandemic 2019 where deliveries surpassed the 800 plateau, and only the second time since 2009.

JetNet iQ creator Rolland Vincent, of Rolland Vincent Associates, pointed to simultaneous rising deliveries and backlogs, saying, “From an OEM point of view, you want to start turning that backlog into more cash. We could probably easily be doing 1,000 airplanes this year as an industry, and even for a sustained period.”

However, supply chain constraints are forcing discipline.  Bombardier president and CEO Éric Martel noted the company’s desire to scale up production and told analysts its leadership was conducting a deep dive with suppliers to see what is possible. Any step change probably wouldn’t occur until 2027, and only in line with what’s possible, Martel said, while conceding that if backlogs get too long that it could hamper sales activity.

Meanwhile, the preowned market has been humming along but at a more rational pace than the Covid frenzy. The Internal Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA) reported during NBAA-BACE that the preowned business aircraft market is entering the fourth quarter in healthier condition than during the post-pandemic surge.

IADA credited two policy shifts with shaping demand in the U.S. market. First, the reinstated 100% bonus depreciation—now permanent—for qualifying new or preowned aircraft placed in service on or after Jan. 20, 2025. According to IADA, this has “pulled forward demand, sharpened year-end closing urgency, and improved net affordability for U.S. buyers.” Second, a July provisional deal between the U.S. and EU preserved tariff-free trade in aircraft, engines, and parts, reducing a major uncertainty for cross-border transactions.

“Momentum is firming after a cyclical cool-down from the 2021 to 2023 peak,” the report said.  Inventory levels have normalized, pricing is more rational, and demand is supported by resilient corporate travel in North America, increasing wealth in the Middle East, and a notable rebound in large-cabin activity.

GJC forecasts that preowned transactions will account for 2,604 aircraft this year, growing to 2,926 in 2029.

Permanent return of full expensing has provided a boon for both new and preowned aircraft. The iQ survey released in September showed that more than half of the respondents said the return of the tax change would increase the likelihood of purchasing a new aircraft in the next 12 months.

The iQ survey also showed how overall sentiment had started to turn from a mostly pessimistic environment to an optimistic one. In the second quarter, when tariff uncertainty had cooled the market, 51.9% of respondents were pessimistic about the market conditions for business aviation, while only 34.4% believed the market was past the low point; this represented a net optimism of -17.5%. In Q3, however, net optimism jumped to a +28.4% with 57.9% of respondents now saying the market is past the low point and 29.5% still believing it is on the downturn. The net optimism metric was at the highest level since the third quarter of 2022.

The optimism curve trended up in all the global regions, “That's a really good indication for the year-end,” Vincent said. Europe is actually leading the charge on optimism, he added, fueled by significant wealth transfer and the fact that many have yet to discover business aviation.

“We are seeing several key indicators pointing to the health of the market—customer sentiment, preowned jet sales year to date, flying aircraft, order backlogs, book-to-bills, and improved aircraft purchase intent, albeit the latter still at a somewhat subdued level,” Vincent said.