I wanna know if the twin market is ever going to recover to the early 2000s levels. All these darn high performance singles are too good these days LOL.

Edit: doesn’t seem like fuel prices make a difference here, I have only been flying since 2010 and I remember back then 5.50$/gal for 100LL was a pretty common price. Now it seems like you don’t have to look very hard to find sub 4$ fuel and under 3$ is available in some parts of the country.

No.

The piston twin market basically has existed for two reasons

1) pilots who want an engine-out backup
2) pilots who want more speed/capability/deice/whatnot than you can run on 300hp

Cirrus has replaced market #1
SETP have replaced market #2

Those are both oversimplifications but supply vs demand is a balance and it doesn’t take much to tip the scales. They’re tipped.

As the SETP fleet ages and prices continue to drop, SETPs become very attractive to even the lower end of of the market. You can pick up an old meridian for 500 AMU's today. If the price drops further, assuming the engine still has a good amount of time to TBO, it starts to get very competitive purchase wise with pistons. Yes, yearly running costs will be much higher, but more people will move up.

Humans still have good memories. Without assurances that administration differences don’t bring us back to the days of $7 avgas, the market will remain muted. Also a factor; maintenance labor and parts prices (think $50k/side overhaul) drive behaviors. For those that already have a twin, staying in it is an easier decision than sticking a toe in the water.

We all long for the days of $1.60 100LL, at least those of us that remember. I’m only in my 40s, so it wasn’t that far back.

Shaun,

I agree. I think we are headed for a serious dip!

Agree with Chip on the upcoming dip.

One of the reasons that the used market is so tight is that nearly every major manufacturer cut production by nearly half. Remove those new units, and it takes options and slack out of the market. Don't underestimate the impact that the reduction in new unit availability has had on used unit prices.

New entrants, participants, into GA may or may not last. Like every thing it looks great going in, but then the reality of weather, maintenance, etc, kicks in. Some will remain. Some will exit, but 18-24 mos from now.

Long term economic impact of this situation is unclear. Gov't cannot increase payouts forever and taxpayers cannot pay back the debts that the gov't is running up.

Interest rates at historic lows.... insane... you can borrow against a plane at rates that were unheard of ten years ago in the home mortgage market. The no cost/low cost money will at some point dry up.

Boeing 737 Max has ripples throughout the economy and the supply chain. Even though it is flying, airlines don't need the planes... demand way down. This has impact well beyond Boeing. Only guys booming now are companies who make guns and outdoor recreational gear.

Bottom line is that no one knows long term impact of this shutdown. Economies move on confidence. Not sure that the folks on deck politically, inspire a lot of economic confidence.

Will be interesting....

My experience this summer was buying one aircraft and selling another.

I bought my 182E across the country clear on the other coast. My buyer for my 172G was in Ontario. I am in Nova Scotia.

Now I bought and sold both in Canada so the market is different here. Less planes less pilots, less money. My greatest assets i think were no brokers and both the seller and the buyer were solid honest people who were easy to deal with. Having the border closed to US was a help in my purchase and a bit of a hindrance in my sale. The us dollar being close to 35% higher is two edged. Competing with us buyers is hard but selling in USD is pretty sweet.

First my purchase. I reached out to the owner through a Facebook post that my son found for us. I contacted him immediately and requested some information and or logs to check it out. He had a huge file of pdf’s that he sent me the next day. I found out it was out of annual and made the offer within 24 hours to pay for the annual as a deposit and prepurchase agreement. It was a way to find out that it was airworthy and i would have had to be done to get it home anyway. The owner agreed and i started to look for flights out. It was a bit unconventional as the seller decided that he didn’t require a cash deposit to hold it. We ended up taking the cost of the annual off the asking price

I made arrangements to fly out, inspect, and participate in the annual. We used a local shop to him and i put my trust in the shop’s reputation and honesty. I have to say i acted quicker than i would have in any other time. The plane was/is better than i expected for the price we agreed on. If it wouldn’t have worked out i would have been out the cost of a plane ticket and maybe the annual. But i think that the owner would have made me whole on the expense as he is just that good of a fellow. I ended up flying it back across Canada with my 17 year old son and his buddy. These two were picked for the Air Cadet PPL scholarship but it was canceled due to covid. They’ll at least have that memory to remember the summer of loss. The hardest thing about the purchase was begging the time off work to cover the trip and our mandatory 2 week quarantine for travel outside our provincial borders. I think being decisive, honest, and willing to make the jump worked in my favor.

My sale of my 172 was easy and smooth. I had it advertised online on controller and Barnstormers. Also it was on our national free buy and sell website Kijiji which is where it was sold from. The purchaser was motivated and eager. Same thing was done. I had an extensive google photos folder with many photos and the PDF’s of the logs. He offered me a deposit to have it inspected locally. I flew the plane there to be inspected for him. It passed, we agreed on a price and i had it delivered to him in Ontario by two commercial pilot/instructors i know who are starting an aviation business. I held my 172 until i had my 182 home and tied down so I wouldn’t be planeless if my purchase fell through. I did the transaction by phone while camping with my two sons sitting around a campfire.

It was an easy process to do both transactions, quick and no real hassles. I had lots of interest in mine in both Canada and the US both before and after the deposit. I even had someone offer me more than asking price after taking the deposit, if i would sell it to them. I imagine my seller of the 182 did as well as the market is tight for product now. I would never not abide by an agreement nor could i imagine the seller would have either. Now i understand that the Bonanza is a larger purchase than a 172/182 with more to consider but my buy and sell worked out excellently.

No.

The piston twin market basically has existed for two reasons

1) pilots who want an engine-out backup
2) pilots who want more speed/capability/deice/whatnot than you can run on 300hp

Cirrus has replaced market #1
SETP have replaced market #2

Those are both oversimplifications but supply vs demand is a balance and it doesn’t take much to tip the scales. They’re tipped.

Chip, how many late model 350i's change hands in a typical quarter? Is this a small enough niche that if two guys unexpectedly have bypass surgery sales can dry up for a few months?

The covid uncertainty has been the biggest buyer advantage if you are disciplined and know what you want, many distressed sellers and situations exist

That’s the interesting thing, we are seeing basically the opposite, but it leans heavily towards jets. We are normally about 50/50 turboprop to jets and last year was heavily turboprops... this year four of our last six clients have been jets and not turboprop alternates either, this has been Hawkers, Lears, large cabin Citations.

There’s a dealer email that goes out every day called PlaneFax, many of you are familiar, they’ve been around since it was, well a fax.

Today there were just four aircraft listed for sale, but ten wanted ads! The wanted section is usually a few lines at the end.

And true to what we are seeing, all jets. The only small jet wanted was for a Cirrus Jet.

Weird market.

”New entrants, participants, into GA may or may not last. Like every thing it looks great going in, but then the reality of weather, maintenance, etc, kicks in. Some will remain. Some will exit, but 18-24 mos from now.“

Agree with this consideration for the GA part of the market.

With more expensive business part of the AC market there will likely be continued strength to come with the massive amount of recent additional financial engineering (aside from rate cuts) to create inflation. It can be good for large corporate companies and those folks at the top, businesses at the top, ...but at a certain point the costs of inflation will outweigh the cheap financing = prices will have to cool, /the game has to be slowed down with all the bond buying, and mortgage back security buying, its going to create a new form of stagflation and more distortions. (no one pays much attention to what started to happen before the end of last year.) It’s kind of crazy when the fed is buying corporate bonds and that money goes back into the markets,....It’s the financial’ization of everything, and many see it as nationalizing private markets. EU just extended programs out to Mar 22’ but was expected size, for longer duration. This is more about financial markets which is NOT the economy,...as in my view the higher end AC market is financial based not based on broader economy, unlike the smaller end of GA, more economy based but not entirely.

The cutting of interest rates effect in the last decade was most effective and dramatic already, the US can not afford to go flatter or negative, it would mess up the bond trading for EU as well as put the US at more risk for Japanification. (There could be a sovereign debt crisis ahead but most would think I’m nuts for saying that.)

I liked the term I heard before the Covid crisis, “the great separation” it makes sense for many reasons but I think markets will be more fractured and the if the fed/ and treasury weren’t so (overly so) involved in the markets would be having larger moves but would also be normalized in less time, but they wont let that happen that way. Too scary for people since asset markets now drive people and sentiment as much as they seem to. (Part of the Financial psychology during Covid = look asset prices are going up dont be so dreary, versus imagine if we took longer to get where we are now.)

Maybe there will be a great separation in the AC market,...depends on what changes will come also to the fuel/engine part of the market. All fascinating, just observations- hope that was too much of a tangent.

Things that are cheap right now:
1) The cost of money &
2) Taxes

Things that will go up in the next 2-5 years:
1) The cost of money &
2) Taxes

__________________________
"Surround yourself with good people and life will be great"
Shaun

You would think, but people $&%# it up every...single...day.

Yes, it's simple if you deal with it every day. However, if you are a first time, or a casual buyer, it is not as simple as made out to be. The paperwork involved, even on a very simple transaction, the logistics, making sure neither of you are getting the short end of the stick, etc. 30 years ago you could buy a GA airplane with a handshake and cash or a check. Today, there are many other small items that can create much bigger issues. Here are a few examples just from this last couple weeks:

I had a local potential customer come to me today asking me to broker his four seat experimental airplane that he's owned for ~8 years. After some conversation, a few red flags started going up. So I started by going to the FAA website and seen that he never registered the airplane when he bought it, and it was so long ago, the N-number was cancelled and has been reserved by a another corporation for three years. I have no idea if he has flown it since he bought it.

A month ago, I sold my Aerostar. I had three title searches for it, one from when I bought it in 2014, one from the buyer recently, and one the next day from the title company I use a lot for customer airplanes. Only one of those title searches (the company I use) actually showed a list of errors in the paperwork filed with the FAA. The other two were very well known title companies. Things that should have been "common sense"....like the correct serial number of the airplane!

This week, I bought a Cessna 414. It took an entire morning of my time to try to explain that the previous seller #%$ed up the paperwork which got the wrong year in the FAA's database. The insurance underwriter only draws their information from the FAA's database and REFUSED to change the model year, even though the logbooks clearly showed the production flight in 1976, the A/W certificate showed 1976, and Cessna's own information showed it as a 1976 model. The bank that financed the purchase for me had a conniption because the model year was wrong on the insurance policy. All because a dipshit (and a friend of mine) was too freaking cheap to pay $100 to have a title company do the paperwork properly. In the end, the bank accepted my explanation of why it was wrong. All because of "common sense" as you say...

I looked at 13 Cessna 441's a few years ago for a customer, and 1/4 had no idea where the logbooks were for a $1M airplane! One Canadian broker asked me to call around to three shops in the US to see if I could find them! Seriously?

On the couple airplanes a year that I broker, I spend an incredible amount of time dealing with stupid stuff that buyers did when they bought the airplane, or that they did since they bought it.. You would be amazed how many people do not know where they put something that should be as simple as an Airworthiness Certificate, or a Registration Certificate. Isn't that just "common sense?" I could go on all day, but I won't...

Am I suggesting that everyone that buys an airplane runs to folks like Chip, Neal, etc.? Of course not. But I would bet that 50% of the casual airplane transactions that take place without some type of professional assistance likely have errors in the transaction. Some, the FAA catch, some they don't....

You would think, but people $&%# it up every...single...day.