
Preowned Annual Report
The used jet market has had to contend with more than its fair share of obstacles over the past few years and 2012 didn’t offer any relief. They say that when the stock market moves up it climbs a wall of worry and that’s probably not much different from how jet buyers view the aircraft market. That said, there may be a bit less to worry about than there was last year at this time.
Action remains concentrated, as it has been for some time, on aircraft built after 1999–the models many lending institutions consider good investments. Today, in North America, roughly 7 percent of aircraft in this group are for sale, which means they’re in reasonably tight supply. In Europe, 16 percent of these aircraft are available–a decidedly softer market, which makes for fertile shopping grounds. In fact, among some model types, there are now at least as many aircraft for sale in Europe as in the U.S.–a probable result of the large number of jets that European buyers absorbed in the mid-2000s.
So 2012 seemed to spur many to get back into the market and it perhaps brought risk-averse buyers a step closer to the pricing floor they may have been waiting for before plunking down their euros and dollars. Current pricing seems to be breaking the law of supply and demand, but if 2012’s level of activity continues, we could see some models adhere to this most basic of economic theses in the year ahead.