The thought of putting out a 10-year forecast for the future of business aircraft sales seems crazy, and maybe it is, but Honeywell’s annual outlook has been, with a few exceptions, very solid, based on actual sales performance compared with Honeywell’s historic forecast. And this year’s forecast seems to make sense, with a couple of takeaways that line up with what Plane & Pilot has seen in the marketplace (and the larger economy as a whole).
One of the main drivers of new airplane sales is the availability of recent model used aircraft, and there are higher numbers of them in the fleet right now, so used sales will be strong for the next few years. Forecasters say that “a full one-third of the fleet is expected to be replaced or supplemented with a used jet over the next five years,” the highest level in the past five years.
At the same time, sales of new aircraft, thanks to the arrival on the scene of new models, including the Cessna Longitude, which just began delivering, will help fuel sales of new planes in the short term. Honeywell forecasts sales of 7,600 new jets over the next 10 years, a market valued at just under $250 billion. That’s a lot, but it represents a decrease of a couple of percentage points compared with last year’s survey, and with numbers like this, a percentage point is worth a couple of billion dollars.
One trend that continues!the economic activity of the market is driven by long- and ultra-long range aircraft, which account for nearly three-quarters of the global market by value.
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