Charter Data Shows Mixed Picture

How's the charter market doing? That depends on whose reports you believe. Avinode, an online charter marketplace, said its demand index for November 1 dipped below 60, having stood at 69.1 just 30 days earlier. Over the same period, Avinode's average price index showed a slight fall of less than 1 percent to 92.86. By contrast, the CharterX log of actual flight hours in October indicated that light and heavy jet activity were both up 14 percent, while the number of flights in midsize aircraft rose 20 percent. Although CharterX reports increases across the board, Avinode's flight-hour prices for some aircraft types showed softening in demand. For example, the average rate for a Cessna Citation Excel in the U.S. on November 1 was $3,156, down 5.6 percent from the October 1 rate. The average November 1 prices for a Hawker 800 and a Challenger 604 in the U.S. were also down just over 5 percent from a month earlier.