AIRLINES COULD begin to face a shortage of aircraft capacity as soon as 1996, leading to a steep rise in leasing rates according to industry specialist, GATX Air.
"There's going to be a scarcity again," warned GATX Air executive vice-president Glenn Hickerson, when he addressed airline representatives at a Russia-American aerospace conference in San Diego, California, earlier this month.
He says that there is growing optimism within the market that the recession has now "bottomed out, at least in the near term", adding that any further increase in demand will result in a capacity shortfall and spur a steep increase in leasing rates.
Citing narrowbody aircraft as an example, Hickerson says that current operating-lease rates of typically $10,000 a month could rise to around $50,000 a month for a five-year lease.
For widebodied aircraft, he predicts that the cost of leasing McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10/30s and Lockheed L-1011-1/50/200/500s will go up.
Airliner manufacturing lead times have been forced down, from 24-36 months, to around a year through the recession, so the dearth of orders today is likely to translate into a shortage of new deliveries by 1996, he argues. That is despite the prospect of "...700 parked aircraft will come back into the inventory".
California-based GATX Air has arranged leases or financing on a fleet of 107 aircraft which are operated by around 40 airlines internationally.
Source: Flight International
