August brought good news to the general aviation industry as two major trade groups reported their respective segment’s sales number for the first half of 2023. First out with avionics-industry stats was the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA), which celebrated the highest quarterly sales volume in the history of its Avionics Market Report. According to AEA, total avionics sales for the first half of 2023 reached over $1.6 billion, an increase of 19.2 percent over 2022’s first half. Remarkably, 59.5 percent of avionics sales in the second quarter of 2023 came from the so-called forward-fit market, i.e., installed in new aircraft. The remaining 40.5 percent went into retrofit sales. The numbers marked the largest quarterly forward-fit sales volume in the 10-year history of the report.
Similar good news also came out from GAMA, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Its quarterly numbers for piston-powered aircraft saw an 11.4 percent increase over the same period in 2022, while turboprops were up a tantalizing 17.4 percent against last year. Bizjet sales increased 2.4 percent against 2022, with only a 1.4 percent bump when compared with the second quarter last year.
