![]()
When looking for early indications of how the business aircraft market will perform in 2024, the most important thing to consider is that there are still 11 months left where anything can change. Just think back four years ago to January 2020.It was just now, around the start of February, that the phrase "coronavirus" first began popping up with frequency on the internet, according to Google Trends data. In short, everyone wants a leg up on the crystal ball when trying to predict the market, but tomorrow is never known. Keep that in mind as this week, we got as many caveats as we did predictions in the latest JETNET iQ Pulse report.Rollie Vincent, creator of the service, offers an opening statement that decisions being made now by corporate investors on spending and strategy will not be known to the larger world until the books are closed in 2024, roughly a year from now.
"For competitive reasons, many strategic conversations are taking place behind closed doors and at all hours, shielded for a time until later revealed in corporate initiatives, investments and divestitures, results, and new products and services," Vincent wrote. "Big bets are being placed on the future of business aviation, with many more to be made in the year ahead."
And when it comes to trying to forecast the outcome of those decisions, "the near-term outlook can sometimes seem to be about as clear as Foggy Bottom," he stated.
For 2023, JETNET reports that the final numbers will show that somewhere around 750 new business jets were delivered, a 7% gain from 2022. Meanwhile, unit sales of preowned private jets were down around 22%, year to year.
The percentage of private jets for sale has now risen to around 7% (4% for the global fleet of turboprops for sale), inching closer to historical norms, as prices and valuations have seen a "noticeable softening."
For 2024, Vincent stated that JETNET expects somewhere between 785 and 800 new business jets to be delivered, depending on the certification of new models and entry-into-service dates.
Any such prediction, of course, comes with a huge caveat: We live in an uncertain and violent world.
From the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War to the Israeli-Hamas conflict that has unsettled other areas of the Middle East, such as Houthi attacks on shipping lanes around Yemen and the Suez Canal, Vincents noted that "geo-political risk (is) now brightly on the radar,"
Growing tensions elsewhere, such as Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, as well as the long-unresolved conflict on the Korean Peninsula, come as elections will impact more than half of the global population this year.
"A looming U.S. presidential election in November 2024 could have profound implications for global policy, military and commercial alliances, and investment decisions that are keeping the best scenario planners up at all times of the night," Vincent wrote.
With so much in play and so much in stake, 2024 carries with it many variables - any one of which could boil over and become an industry game-changer.
Other insights in the JETNET iQ Pulse report
In addition to Vincent's assessment of navigating the ever-changing market in an uncertain world, WINGX Managing Director Richard Koe weighed in the waxing and waning of business jet flight activity over the past few years, also noting how global events have driven industry patterns.
"Purchasers and users took a decade to nurse the hangover from the global financial crisis," he noted of conditions through much of the previous decade. While from 2017 onward, as the rebound from the Great Recession became realized, it "was then capsized by the black swan of COVID."
Koe wrote that in hindsight, the conditions created by the pandemic-induced shutdown should have made clear the perfect storm that led to the boom of recent years in private aviation.
"But at the time, the pace of the upswing in business jet activity confounded many," he wrote. "Suppliers were caught on the hop. As demand overwhelmed supply, prices surged."
Since then, the war in Ukraine "took the wind out of the European bizav market" while flights in the U.S. have stabilized despite a regional banking scare last spring, where geographically Florida has become the hub for private aviation, while California has cooled.
The JETNET report, among other things, also takes the pulse of aircraft owner and operator sentiment. Early results in the company's ongoing tracker show that mood is improving as the economy continues to post numbers better than what's been forecast. Perhaps the biggest surprise is, despite the regional headwinds, that "customers in Europe are also relatively optimistic, a result that is perhaps less expected given sluggish economic conditions across most of the continent."
Access the complete JETNET iQ Pulse report here.