The Market Looks Slower. I Think It’s Getting Tighter.

Through the first nine months of 2026, pre-owned business jet transactions were down 2.5% from a year earlier. On its own, that sounds like the beginning of a familiar story: the market is cooling.

But look at the other numbers.

The number of aircraft entering the market fell 7%. The number for sale declined 2.7%. Asking-price reductions dropped nearly 37%.[1]

If demand were really weakening, I would expect to see more aircraft sitting for sale, more sellers getting impatient and more prices being reduced.

We are seeing the opposite.

A decline in transactions would normally make me cautious. Right now, I’m not sure it is telling us what people think it is.

And I think there is another way to read what is happening: the market may not be running out of buyers. It may be running short of aircraft those buyers actually want to buy.

A database can tell you that 15, 20 or 50 examples of a particular aircraft type are for sale. That does not mean a serious buyer really has 15, 20 or 50 choices.

JETNET says 74% of today’s business jets for sale are now 16 years old or older. Aircraft five years old or less represent only about 6% of listings. Overall inventory sits at roughly 6.6% of the operating fleet, still well below the 9% to 12% range of the previous decade.[2]

Global Jet Capital reaches the same conclusion another way. At the end of Q2, only 3.7% of the fleet aged 12 years or younger was available for sale.[3]

So, the headline inventory number can be technically accurate and commercially misleading.

We are working on several searches right now, some for a Pilatus PC-24 and others for a Citation Sovereign. Depending on the database and the day you check, you may see roughly 15 pre-owned PC-24s advertised for sale.

In reality, probably six or seven of them are actually for sale. Add perfectly reasonable requirements around avionics, configuration and pedigree, and that number shrinks again.

The Sovereign market is just as tight.

There is a big difference between an airplane being listed and an airplane being a realistic acquisition candidate.

We are seeing more owners effectively tell us: “Find me my next airplane first. Then sell mine.”

That is not the market's overwhelming state. There are still airplanes to buy and plenty of transactions are getting done. But we are seeing it more often, and it makes sense.

If you are taking delivery of a new aircraft, the replacement question is largely solved. You know what is coming and, within reason, when it is coming.

If your replacement is pre-owned, there is an if involved.

You can sell a very good airplane today and then find that the one you want to replace it with isn't available, or is only available with real compromises.

So, the owner waits.

That keeps another desirable airplane off the market.

Which tightens supply.

Which makes the next owner more reluctant to sell before finding a replacement.

IADA identified the same basic tension in its Q2 report: sellers have more bargaining power, but would-be sellers also face the reality that they must source replacement lift in the same constrained market.[4]

That creates a feedback loop.

Scarcity is no longer just an outcome of the market. In some cases, it is helping create more scarcity.

Tight supply also changes what a seller’s market is actually worth to an owner who is trading up.

Most of the owners we helped sell this year replaced their aircraft with something bigger. And the newest aircraft, and the largest jets, are where the market is tightest.[1][2] So the typical seller is selling into a looser part of the market and buying into a tighter one.

Even when everything rises together, the arithmetic works against them. Take round numbers: trade an $8 million aircraft for a $20 million one. If both rise 5%, you get $400,000 more for yours and pay $1 million more for the next one, so the gap you have to fund widens by $600,000.

Both aircraft go up by the same percentage. The one you’re buying goes up by more dollars.

Good aircraft are regularly shared among dealers and brokers before they are formally advertised. We are an IADA Accredited Dealer and I am an IADA Certified Broker, so I see this from the inside: members often know an aircraft is becoming available before it appears publicly, and some of those aircraft transact during that period. IADA’s accredited dealers make up about 17% of aircraft dealers worldwide but account for more than 50% of global pre-owned transactions.[5]

Public marketplaces are still useful. But in a tight market, they can overstate a buyer’s actual choice while understating how much is trading away from public listings. Access and timing start to matter alongside price.

Whenever owners see scarcity or some froth in the market, a few will reach for a number the market does not support. That can backfire. Aircraft buyers are sophisticated enough to recognize an unrealistic asking price, and they skip it.

Then the days on market add up, and the conversation changes from “When can we see it?” to “Why has that one been sitting for so long?” An unrealistic asking price can taint a good airplane.

IADA dealers reported fewer price reductions in the first half of 2026 than in any prior year going back to 2023, while its survey showed the market shifting further toward sellers.[4] That does not mean every asking price works. It means desirable aircraft, priced properly, have very little reason to be discounted.

Pricing correctly from the beginning can help the seller more than reaching for an unachievable number and chasing the market afterward.

I’m an aircraft dealer, not an economic forecaster, but the wider economy is hard to ignore.

In the U.S., household net worth rose $12.8 trillion in the second quarter to a record $195.9 trillion, driven mostly by stock-market gains,[6] and the wealthiest 1% of households now hold a record 32.5% of it.[7]

Canada is showing a similar divide. Canadian household net worth rose 2.9% in Q2 to $19.1 trillion, driven largely by financial-market gains, and the wealthiest 20% of households hold 69% of household financial assets.[8]

That helps explain why business aviation can look surprisingly resilient while the broader consumer economy feels much less enthusiastic.

Tax policy is helping too. The U.S. has made 100% bonus depreciation permanent.[9] In Canada, the proposed Productivity Mega Deduction is already part of 2026 acquisition discussions. If it is enacted as proposed, qualifying aircraft acquired on or after September 15, 2026, would be eligible for immediate expensing.[10]

And higher OEM production will not quickly flood the pre-owned market either: program operators took 18% of new deliveries so far in 2026, against 10% before the pandemic.[2]

For buyers, I would not assume that waiting automatically creates more choice. Prices can soften. More aircraft can come to market. OEM deliveries should eventually help.

But if you are looking for a relatively young, high-pedigree airplane with specific equipment, waiting for a dramatically better selection may prove more frustrating than waiting for a better price.

Be ready before the right airplane appears. And being ready is not the same as rushing.

Have financing lined up. Know what you will compromise on and what you will not. Have your legal, technical and pre-purchase resources ready to go. Have a good aircraft broker quarterbacking all of this for you.

But do not shortcut the diligence because you are afraid of losing the airplane. Title, records, pre-buy, damage history, engine and airframe status exist for a reason. Missing an airplane can feel painful. Buying one you should not have bought is worse.

For sellers, today’s scarcity is an advantage, but solve the replacement-aircraft question early if you still need lift, and know the spread before you list. Resist the temptation to confuse a strong market with an unlimited one.

Price it right and you may have more than one buyer chasing it. Ask too much and it sits, and the longer it sits, the more buyers wonder what’s wrong with it.

That is why a 2.5% drop in transactions does not worry me much. Inventory is not building, and sellers are cutting prices less, not more.

The number I would watch is not simply how many airplanes are listed for sale. It is how many fit a serious buyer’s mission, age, equipment, pedigree, price and timing, and can actually be bought.

Call it executable inventory.

Those are the aircraft buyers are really competing for. And right now, I think that number is smaller than it looks.

If you are weighing a sale, a purchase or a trade and want a second opinion on what is actually executable, reply to this email. It comes straight to me.

Stan

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