A recent market analysis released by Jetnet, a company that has researched business aviation since 1988, shows promising trends in the business aviation market. The used bizjet market is showing improvements and business jet operations by U.S operators are slowly increasing domestically and internationally.
The first six months of 2012 showed a promising up trend in the used business jet market with sales and average asking price increasing by nearly five percent and the average time on the market decreasing by 14 days over the same time period last year, though sellers can still expect to hold on to their airplanes for an average of about a year.
While there have been ups and downs in the past few years, U.S. business jet operations have also shown overall growth, though it’s slow and gradual, since the drastic drop in 2008 when increasing fuel costs and a negative perception of business jet operations, particularly after ailing car manufacturers flew their bizjets to Washington to request government bailout money, had a dramatic effect on the market.
Domestic U.S. business jet use fell from a peak of 373,000 monthly operations in October of 2007 to 225,000 in February 2009. But since that low there has been overall continuous growth. In the past two years, monthly domestic flight ops have averaged 274,000, the most recent report being June 2012 when Jetnet reported 271,000 operations.
Meanwhile, international U.S.-based business jet ops is back at the 2007 levels, with an average of 54,000 monthly operations and a peak of 62,000 per month in March of this year.
