Preowned Market Recovering Slowly, Report Indicates

“While the preowned business aircraft market continues to show improvements, all indicators have been slow to recover in the first nine months of 2011,” according to the latest report from industry research firm JetNet. “These figures are, however, much improved compared to the lows recorded over the past two years, as the for-sale inventories have declined and full-sale transactions have improved.” Preowned business jets for sale at the end of September represented 13.8 percent of the in-service fleet, down from 15.1 percent a year ago. Asking prices remained soft during the first nine months of the year, sliding 19.7 percent compared with the same period last year. However, business jet transactions in the first nine months climbed 11 percent from the year-ago period. Meanwhile, used business turboprop inventory dropped to 10.1 percent in September, down 0.6 points from the same time last year. Despite this, average asking prices and sales transactions for preowned turboprops declined 12.9 and 0.9 percent, respectively. The average days on market for jets climbed 18 days to 373 in the first three quarters, while turboprops took 25 fewer days (325) to sell, JetNet said.