I can't speak to Bonanza's, but we are certainly not pre-covid in the jet world.

As has already been addressed in this thread, inventory levels are no longer critically low, but they aren't pre-covid either.

Pre-covid there were new airplanes sitting on the ramp ready for purchase, choose your stripes and let's go! If I remember correctly, you could get any new production jet in a few months.

As I have mentioned before, Controller is like a sieve, the fine airplanes flow through quickly, the rough ones get stuck.

You also have the issue of brokers leaving airplanes listed for months after they are sold because they have nothing else to advertise and you end up with a site chock full of aircraft that are over-priced or have stories or are already sold.

The average quality of listings is getting better, and for the first time in years demand is soft enough that there are several nice airplanes on Controller that are worth buying. So, I don't disagree that things are better for buyers than they were and we have seen a few over-inflated markets come back into alignment.

The reality is Controller is just one data point and when you dig into the numbers, the picture that emerges is typically different than what it appears on the surface.

As always, I am using broad generalizations because we are talking about the whole market. To truly understand available inventory levels, one has to study that individual market.

Want to buy a Hawker, Challenger, or maybe a Beechjet? They're abundant.

Want to buy an XLS or Phenom 300E... good luck.

Mustangs, we show 36 currently on the market and only 8 that could be viable for our average Mustang client.

That's a huge difference between perception and reality.

But, the good news is that 8 good airplanes is as high as it has been in a while!

I don't see manufacturers going back to pre-COVID inventoried white planes. To much capital is tied up. Between the carrying cost and the buyer leverage to negotiate, manufactures are better to, build to order and maintain a backlog.

My impression of Textron for example: they have no desire to grow the manufacturing base, without a known long term trend for more base demand for their products. It costs to much to add buildings and people in what is usually a highly cyclical business.

Textron will use pricing to raise and lower their demand and backlog. This is how I now operate my manufacturing business.

We all benefit from this. The new market has more stable pricing and supply. The used market has a consistent benchmark to value older planes against. Makes it a lot easier to sink $500k into a 20 year old jet knowing the new ones aren't going to take a super dive in value with oversupply.

I think the demand has been satisfied. Covid brought a new landscape to GA with many people opting out of flying commercially anymore.

Many people selected NetJets, and that company had to scramble to meet the demand. They outsourced to "approved" subcontractors (charter operators), offered considerable free upgrades to clients just to get their flight completed, and stopped selling cards. In those ways, they were able to modulate supply as well as demand. In 2024, NetJets alone added over 50 aircraft. And they have the option to purchase 1,500 more Citations from Textron over the coming decade.

Commercial pilots retired in massive numbers, creating a vacuum of qualified 135 pilots, and a huge demand for new pilots. That spiked the training system throughout the country, and those operators paid top dollar to find usable 172s and PA-24s. In other words, they overpaid for those trainers. From talking with instructors now, I sense that the urgent demand for new pilots has waned, and many of the latest crop of freshly minted pilots are not finding jobs in the airlines.

The overpaying by flight schools for 172s and PA-24s allowed the sellers to "moved up the ladder" to Bonanzas, C210s, even PA-46s and in some cases SR-22s. They paid top dollar for the shrinking inventory. Many of those sellers took their money and bought SETPs, SF-50s, or VLJs. Those sellers moved up to CJs, 501s, etc.

But the status quo has been re-established, and prices have stabilized. I think the biggest driver for the rest of the year is going to hinge on the economy (many GA owners are business owners; that's what allows them to own and justify the expense of an aircraft) and the stock market.

If the Trump Plan works as advertised, then I think the prosperity will continue.

However, much of the price "increase" which many people are tooting about is really just inflation. Since 2019, the cumulative inflation impact has been ~25%. Whenever somebody tells you they owned a plane over the recent years then sold it for what they bought it for, what they're really saying is they didn't keep up with inflation.

Agreed.

In early 2021, I had a client who chose to pay more for an airplane than either of us believed it was worth. He told me, "Chip, I don't want to be sitting on a wheelbarrow full of money in six months that won’t buy an airplane like this."

His point was that with money being printed like it was going in the plastic bank included in a Monopoly board game, it was clear that inflation was going to have a huge impact on the price of tangible goods like real estate and airplanes.

I agree, I think the manufacturing mentality has forever changed. The crazy thing is that even with a backlog, Textron is not producing near as many jets as they did pre-covid, it's a complex issue, but a huge problem is they can't get the components to increase production!

Why build more King Airs if you can't get windshields.

How are pricing levels?

How are pricing levels?

How are pricing levels?

I just bought an A36 for local flights and I absolutely love it. I looked at F33s and V35Bs also and searched for more than 6 months. There are extremely few high quality airplanes in the country of any particular species. Prices are not going to fall on ANY quality airplane. They aren't making many new ones and the new price is an order of magnitude higher than a solid used one.

Embrace the new normal. Buy the best example you can get; if you overpay a little, that's fine if you're going to keep it.

Congratulations, Mike!

True. The nice examples come up rarely. A savvy buyer knows the best plane is the most affordable in the end.

True. The nice examples come up rarely. A savvy buyer knows the best maintained plane is the most affordable in the end.

Just a micro-event but likely indicative of what likely happens next, two nice Mustangs were removed from the market today.

This started happening in 2021, sellers expected that the airplanes would bring higher prices with seller favorable terms in the fall.

My gut says now is the time to buy.

If you can find them. Some sellers get rather testy when this happens and hold on to the airplanes thinking they've been cheated by the market.

That's usually not the location of reason.

Given the pending legislation to restore bonus depreciation, and the trouble the bill has right now leaving committee, buyers will wait to see if that settles. Even if the buyers are ready, the sellers will hold out for the higher values they can get if it passes. The uncertainty will freeze the market until it gets clearly defined.

Sellers got accustomed to their high valuations in the past few years and won't give up on that easily. Those with big loans will be especially reluctant to lower prices if they are underwater or nearly so.

Add the macroeconomic uncertainties of the tariffs, inflation, stock market volatility, etc, and I think this will be a very slow summer for aircraft sales. Nobody is quite sure what is going on, so people become conservative, and an airplane purchase is an easy thing to defer. I bet boats and RVs won't have a good year, either, as people move to keeping their powder dry.

Mike C.