At its annual pre-NBAA event, Honeywell forecasters predicted the kind of market that many analyists have been seeing of late: a slight uptick over the next couple of years followed by a strong improvement as world economies recover. The survey took the temperature of business aviation around the globe, asking more than 1,000 operators what kinds of buying decisions they thought they’d make over the near term. Many, Honeywell found, were bullish on their buying prospects over the next five years, but only at the tail end of that period. Major drivers for purchase plans were the usual: new models and new safety features.
The survey found that it was likely that the recent success of high-value, ultra-long range jets would continue. While their numbers will account for a small fraction of the predicted 10,000 bizjet sales over the next 10 years, the value of those deliveries make up a huge percentage of the overall market, which Honeywell estimates to be worth $230 billion over the period, with sales increasingly going to new markets in China, India and Latin America.
