Story ID: 
Amstat's StatPak tracks market trends
By: Mary F. Silitch
Caption: Amstat Corp.
Word Count: 444
Amstat Corp. is here (Booth No. 5775) demonstrating the Amstat StatPak, which provides in-depth statistical information that enables users to see and understand market trends. Using the StatPak, aviation professionals can generate historical data on the number of aircraft available for sale and the number sold. Sales manager Andrew Young gave a presentation of resale market trends for business aircraft Tuesday at a press conference here. Statpak delivered information for four groups of aircraft– turboprop, light jets, medium jets and large jets. It presented the availability of aircraft for resale (as a percentage of the fleet), resale retail sales, average days on the market and average asking prices for each category.In the turboprop category, for example, the availability was charted from August 1998, when it was 10 percent of the fleet, to August 2002, when it was 16 percent. Retail resale transactions were down 18 percent last year, but they were up 4 percent for this year, for a total of 673. The average number of days a turboprop was on the market decreased from a peak of 500 in 1997 to 376 by last month. Asking prices rose to a peak of $1,224,465 in August 2001 and are down 11.3 percent this year.Jumping to the large-aircraft category, Statpak showed that the percentage of the active fleet available for resale in August was 13.7 percent, up from about 5 percent in 1997. Retail resale transactions were at 139, down 13.1 percent from last year’s 160, which itself was down from the 2000 figure of 171. The average number of days that large jets stayed on the market were down considerably from 1997’s close of 450 to August’s 299. The chart for the average asking price shows a peak of just more than $13 million at the end of 1998 to a low of just more than $9 million around March of this year, but climbing back up to around $12 million by this August.Overall, the availability of the active fleet is high, Young said, but the year-to-year rise has slowed or even dropped. The exception is the large-jet segment, where the percentage is accelerating. In the retail resale transactions so far this year, all segments are up significantly as compared with 2001 figures, but no segment has returned to the peak levels reported in 2000.The average days on the market has increased for all segments but the asking prices are down, with large jets falling the least. StatPak data is presented in charts, graphs or tables, depending on the user’s preference. In other news, the Tinton Falls, N.J.-based company announced that its Amstat Handheld is now compatible with the Pocket PC operating system for handheld computers. With the Handheld, subscribers to the firm’s database service, Amstat Premier, can retrieve a selection of aircraft information.