At this week’s NBAA-BACE business aviation show in Orlando, Florida, the International Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA) released its Third Quarter 2022 Market Report, and the association leadership offered its interpretation of the data during a press briefing. As a trade advocacy group with specified standards for membership, IADA currently includes 52 business aircraft dealers (with more than 130 association-certified brokers), eight major original equipment manufacturers, and 80 products-and-services members (vendors and service providers, such as insurance brokers and financial providers).
Offering their analysis of the market report were newly installed IADA officers Zipporah Marmor, vice-president of Aircraft Transactions for Toronto-based ACASS; and Phil Winters, vice-president of aircraft management and charter for Western Aircraft, based in Boise, Idaho. Marmor opened with the observation that, due in part to pent-up, post-pandemic demand and the rush to complete transactions by year-end for tax purposes, December 2021 saw twice as many deal closings on business aircraft, in all size and performance tiers, as any preceding month of the year. Both she and Winters said the pace was “out of balance with the supply and demand situation,” and resulted in artificially high pricing. “While 2022 is still optimistic [for business activity],” Marmor said, “it will not be as dramatic.” Both said that “normalizing” market conditions, which they saw in the third-quarter statistics, was a needed return to balance, and that continued disruption was not good for buyers or sellers in the long run.
Part of the influx in sales activity was reflected in the percentage of new buyers. This is explained, in part, by the migration to private aviation resulting from massive global cutbacks in airline service associated with COVID restrictions. Some 40 percent of business-aircraft transactions in 2021 involved customers new to the private aviation marketplace, according to the IADA report. While most had some exposure to the industry through friends or by chartering, IADA recognizes the responsibility to ensure each buyer is thoroughly vetted and interviewed to ensure they are shopping for the correct aircraft for their mission.
IADA reinforced the necessity for brokers and dealers to double down on ensuring customers are treated fairly and with integrity in their aircraft search. “We are in this for the long term,” said Marmor. “It doesn’t do anyone any good if a customer ends up with the wrong airplane.”
