Delivery Forecasts See Growth Ahead of GAMA Report

Among the industry’s annual rites is the State of the Industry review, where the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) reveals the prior year’s delivery numbers for the broad swath of the business and general aviation industry. Widely followed by analysts, this report is one of the key metrics of the general health of the industry.

Coming into the fourth quarter, business jet deliveries were already up 10% in 2025 to 554, and billings were up by more than $2 billion to $19.4 billion. This is setting the stage for a solid finish, and if Embraer is a harbinger of what is to come, the Brazilian OEM finished 2025 in strong fashion with its executive jet division handing over 155 aircraft for the year, its highest tally in 15 years and exceeding its previous year’s total by 25 deliveries.

Results such as this come as no surprise. In their 10-year business jet delivery prognostications released later last year, Honeywell Aerospace and JetNet both agreed on steady growth ahead for the industry, taking into account the latest economic data, buying trends, announced OEM backlogs, and new aircraft under development.

These prognostications are not an exact science, as the forecasters themselves would readily admit. Unexpected factors such as geopolitical unrest, economic downturns, or even global pandemics can impact those results in ways the analysts can only guess at.

In late 2023, Honeywell predicted that business jet deliveries for 2024 would surpass the 800-unit mark for the first time since 2019. That proved overly optimistic; GAMA closed the book on 2024 with a total of 764 private jets delivered. Subtracting the single-engine “personal” Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet—which Honeywell does not count in its annual forecast—the number of deliveries dipped to 663 in 2024, indicating some bottlenecks lingering in the supply chain as a result of the global pandemic.

Honeywell’s latest forecast, presented on the eve of NBAA-BACE 2025 in October, predicted finishing 2025 with the OEMs handing over 740 business jets (again, excluding the personal jet category). If borne out, it would represent the highest delivery tally for the segment since 2019.

The Honeywell forecast called for business aviation OEMs to deliver 8,500 business jets over the next decade. While that volume remains unchanged for the past four years as OEMs wrestled with post-Covid supply-chain recovery, the report predicts an increase in value to $283 billion for those aircraft, the highest dollar amount in the history of the survey. Of that amount, two-thirds of the value is expected to be on the large-cabin jet segment, according to Honeywell’s calculations.

“I would say starting in 2023 to 2024, and now this year, we’re seeing improvements across all supply chains, ourselves definitely, and you see this in the actual output of OEMs too, where they’re increasing [deliveries],” said Kevin Schwab, strategic planning manager for Honeywell Aerospace. “If you look at OEM guidance, and how we’re doing so far this year in terms of deliveries, I think we’re actually kind of climbing out of this period and starting to deliver the amount of jets the industry needs.”

For 2025, JetNet forecasted deliveries of approximately 820 business jets, up 8% from last year’s total. If that prognostication bears out, that would make it the first year since pre-pandemic 2019 where deliveries surpassed the 800-unit plateau, and only the second time since 2009 at the start of the global economic downturn. JetNet does include the diminutive Vision Jet in its calculations, and last year Cirrus delivered more than 100 of the single-engine jets.

Through 2034, JetNet’s forecast calls for deliveries of 9,700 private jets—on track with Honeywell’s when the anticipated 1,000-plus Vision Jets are subtracted—worth $335 billion in 2025 dollars.

Strong Backlogs Despite Supply Constraints

Despite the trend of rising deliveries, backlogs among the “Big Five” OEMs—Bombardier, Dassault, Embraer, Gulfstream, and Textron Aviation—have continued to rise over the past year. “We’re seeing very persistent backlogs of over two years of production, which is a really nice place to be,” said industry consultant Rolland Vincent, creator of the JetNet iQ survey, “but frankly, 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.”

For 2026, Honeywell’s forecast calls for a 5% increase in deliveries over 2025. “In 2026, we’re expecting to be about 8% above [pre-pandemic] 2019 in terms of units, and because of the larger portion of large jets, now in 2026 we are expecting to be almost 25% up versus 2019 in terms of value of the aircraft that are being delivered,” Schwab told AIN.

Since 2019, fractional operators have seen more than 65% growth, with their fleets now totaling roughly 1,300 aircraft. Demand for the segment has spurred the industry growth, led by the midsize and super-midsize business jet segments.

In the near-term of the forecast, the predicted mix of geographic locations for aircraft deliveries is 71% to North America, 14% to Europe, approximately 7% to Latin America, Asia-Pacific 5%, and 3% of jet deliveries will go to the Middle East and Africa. Schwab noted that North America will account for 69% of the aircraft value due to its more diverse fleet.

“There’s a higher portion of what I would call regional travel, so the value of the jets that are being delivered to North America is a bit lower than the units, and this is just because we’ve got more light jets, basically,” Schwab explained.

That contrasts with regions such as Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, which are expected to account for higher percentages of large jets in their mix due to geography and their distance to world financial centers.

For the 10-year forecast window, Honeywell anticipates an average 3% annual growth, with the market split fairly evenly between small, midsize, and large-cabin/ultra-long-range jets.

It does not see a return to the heady pre-global financial meltdown era and its more than 1,300 aircraft deliveries in 2008, but it does see steady growth, particularly reaching into the 2030s. “What we are expecting to happen in the latter term of our forecast is to get closer to that number and then be sustained,” said Schwab. “While we may not get to the peak of where we were, we suspect we will get to about 900 aircraft a year, and that will be the new normal, and then you will have growth on top of that.”

“Over the next decade, we expect these record-setting levels of deliveries and usage to continue,” he concluded.

Volatility was the best word to describe the state of the business aviation market, according to Vincent. Speaking at NBAA-BACE in October, Vincent explained that while factors such as geopolitical risk and tariffs are driving some discomfort and uncertainty among aircraft buyers, the demand signals are still very strong.

To further illustrate that demand, Vincent examined the on-market inventory of many popular preowned aircraft models and found most with but a handful available. “We’re in a strong demand market, tight supply,” he noted. “If you’ve got one of these for sale, you are in a very strong pricing position.”

According to Vincent, issues that have restrained the industry over the past several years still persist. “We continue to have, after all these years, supply-chain, supplier, talent experience, and talent pipeline issues,” he stated. “So, we have a really nice backlog, well-priced deals of course, if you are the seller, but we’re still not getting over the supply challenge.”

Financial analyst Jefferies—citing results from its most recent survey—reported that brokers of used aircraft are no longer citing geopolitical risks as a market driver, where 27% noted those concerns in the June survey. However, brokers (44%) are now worried about the possible economic slowdowns in key markets, as well as long lead times and supply-chain issues (22%). High-net-worth individuals are anticipated to lead the market this year, with the entertainment sector and government demand coming in weaker.

In December, 1,124 aircraft were available for sale, representing 4.4% of the total fleet. This is down 11% year over year and 5% from June. Jefferies added that some 60% of sales represent replacement aircraft.

Increased Flight Activity

The 4.5 million global business jet and turboprop flights through September of last year represented a 3.7% increase over 2024, with North America accounting for 67% of that activity, according to Christoph Kohler, founder and managing director of JetNet subsidiary WingX. That increase represents part of a larger overall step-change in flight activity since the pandemic. Since 2019, flights have increased by 33%, rendering this summer’s activity the busiest on record.

In the U.S., WingX examined the U.S. cities with the fastest-growing millionaire populations and found that they closely aligned with areas showing the largest increases in private jet activity. The Southeast experienced a rise of more than 46% since 2019, followed by the Southwest at 33%. While weekend leisure activity is growing, the company also found that weekday travel has seen a slight decrease compared to historical data.

Corporate flight department activity has declined, but according to WingX, it has not been eliminated; it has merely migrated to the fractional segment. The company has developed an algorithm that it says can predict flight-hour activity by business sector, based on stock market prices.

In Europe, it noted that many factors have combined to mute growth, including the war in Ukraine, economic stagnation, political instability, and environmental activism.