Leading US brokers and financiers highlight the factors they expect to influence the US market for pre-owned business aircraft in 2026. Chris Kjelgaard reports.
Unsurprisingly to everyone in Business Aviation, two factors have strongly influenced the US market for pre-owned aircraft this year.
One, enabled by the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July, is the return of 100% first-year depreciation (commonly known as 100% bonus depreciation). This time, 100% bonus depreciation has returned without any phased reduction to zero over seven years, as was the case before.
Much anticipated and desired by the US Business Aviation community, the availability of 100% bonus depreciation from 2025 has – as every service provider to the community expected – stimulated purchasing in the US pre-owned aircraft market this year.
But industry insiders’ initial thoughts that the upcoming OBBBA act would provide a strong boost to purchases of pre-owned aircraft in the US even before the bill and its cherished bonus depreciation provision passed into law, proved slightly optimistic.
As the likely provisions of the OBBBA tax bill became increasingly clear in Q2 2025, aircraft brokers began providing “a lot of guidance to clients that ‘you want to be ahead of this’,” by purchasing their desired aircraft before the expected buying flood pushed prices up once OBBBA passed, according to Johnny Foster, CEO of OGARAJETS.
“While many sellers were excited by the opportunity and began planning for a heated ‘seller’s market’, buyers were slow to respond. Perhaps it was that many remained on holiday or they were waiting to see how much depreciation they could accept” as their year-end P&L and balance-sheet positions became clearer in the later months of 2025.
That hesitance served a purpose, though, intensifying the increasing activity that followed once OBBBA became law, putting more pressure on those seeking to buy used aircraft and place them into service before year-end in order to have the purchases qualify for 100% bonus depreciation tax treatment in 2025.
Overall, says Keith Hayes, Senior Vice President and National Sales Manager for PNC Aviation Finance, “Bonus depreciation did inject some additional enthusiasm” into the US pre-owned aircraft market following OBBBA’s passing.
But there has been one sizeable blot partially marring what otherwise would have been a perfect US sales picture in 2025. In a single-country market which represents up to 70% of the entire global Business Aviation industry, a second major factor – the fluctuating US tariffs on foreign-sourced goods – has acted in 2025 to strongly constrain the availability of many aircraft for the increasingly hungry US market.
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This report was originally published by AvBuyer on December 10, 2025.