Ahead of the NBAA event now under way in Orlando, Florida, analysts at Flight Ascend Consultancy held their regular pre-show webinar, using their extensive data and valuations expertise to assess the state of the business aviation market, both in terms of new deliveries and residuals.
Flight Ascend's analysis of annual jet deliveries shows that the market may have established a new normal, hovering around the 700 mark for the past six years and staying stuck at 720 or so in 2014 and 2015. In fact, 2016 could represent a turn for the worse, with figures for the first nine months indicating shipments down 9% on the same period last year. The business jet market has "been struggling to recover" to anywhere near the heights of the mid- to late-noughties, a "period that looks now to be seriously overheated", says Flight Ascend market analysis chief Chris Seymour.
He points out that deliveries in recent years have represented only 3.5% of the total fleet; in 2008, it was more than twice that proportion.
The picture, however, is not uniform. Looking at the market in different size categories, smaller business jets – from very light to medium – had a very slight increase in deliveries during the first three quarters of 2016. As for the rest of the year and beyond, Seymour notes that if this quarter replicates 2015's pace of deliveries, overall shipments may end the year at around 680 units, 5% down on 2015.
Flight Ascend also examined the super-midsize segment, which senior analyst Daniel Hall notes is "entering a new chapter – one of greater competition".
Source: FlightGlobal.com
