NAFA member, Stephen Hofer, President of Aerlex Law Group, discusses the outlook of the 2023 business aviation market.
What will happen to the business aviation market in 2023? That’s the $64,000 question on everyone’s mind now as we come to end of 2022 and what has been a truly unprecedented 18-month paroxysm in market growth. Everyone in the industry, from aircraft brokers, sellers and buyers to management companies, charter providers, aircraft maintenance and repair facilities and even hangar landlords, would like to know the answers as they draft their business plans and draw up their budgets with a new calendar in mind.
I attended the 2022 Corporate Jet Investor Miami Conference in early November at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach and several panels were devoted to forecasting the future. Rollie Vincent, president of Rolland Vincent Associates, LLC and co-creator of JETNET iQ, and Wayne Starling, executive director of the International Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA), two seasoned veterans of the industry with more than 60 years of experience under their collective belts, looked to the numbers rather than tea leaves in an effort to glean the answers.
Starling shared data from IADA’s Third Quarter 2022 Market Report and Quarterly Forecast based on information collected from some 50 dealer/members with 300 brokers (full disclosure, Aerlex Law Group is an IADA Products and Services Member) and it indicated that the third quarter of 2022 was nearly as busy as the whirlwind third quarter of 2021 when the post-Covid 19 recovery first erupted. The numbers were impressive – 331 completed transactions in 3Q 2022 versus 340 in 3Q 2021 and 355 deals under contract in 3Q 2022 versus 360 in 3Q 2021 – although there were a few statistics that suggested a slowdown may be in the offing: 31 transactions with lowered prices in 3Q 2022 versus only 7 in 3Q 2021 and 162 new acquisition agreements in 3Q 2022 versus 190 in 3Q in 2021.
This article was originally published in BusinessAir Magazine, November 2022, Volume 32, No. 11.
