With preowned inventory tightened and the year drawing to a close, brokers and other business aviation leaders speaking at the recent Corporate Jet Investor Miami forum warned the market to be prepared to move on available aircraft, but carefully, advising that they might have to look for inventory in places such as Russia or China.
“Time is really a constraint in terms of trying to conduct any sort of transaction, certainly by the end of the year,” said Par Avion founder and president Janine Iannarelli. “But…I counsel people to still go slow because the last thing I want to do is overlook a point.”
She agreed that finding available aircraft represents one of the biggest challenges, adding that the limited supply has made finding "the right aircraft" difficult.
Keri Dowling, president of Air Law Office, added that buyers must be “prepared to hit the ground running,” including ensuring that clients “frontload” everything as much as possible with the structure and team established. “The mentality these days is the seller is always right,” she added, noting that recently an aircraft buyer’s team lost a deal because it changed an inspection acceptance duration from three to five days and the seller walked away.
“You have to prepare your clients that the seller really is running the show.," Dowling said. "You need to be prepared upfront and ready to go so the seller can't walk away with an asset that you really want or need." As far as moving on an available aircraft, she noted, “It’s a matter of single-digit hours for turnaround time these days. The days of three or four days to think about it and get your money in place and figure it out are gone.”
“Time is of the essence,” said Jeremy Stumpf, v-p of Freestream Aircraft. “The perfect aircraft likely will not be available,” adding that buyers need to move when they find an aircraft that might "check the most boxes" and “make changes to customize the aircraft after you close. The most important thing is to secure the aircraft.”
Amanda Applegate, a partner at Aerlex Law Group, advised that buyers put together teams with expertise in cross-border transactions. “Certainly, in the last six months, I've seen far more cross-border transactions than I've seen in probably the last five years,” Applegate said. “These are coming out of registries or countries that perhaps you wouldn't have looked at before.”
“We are looking around the world for aircraft all the time,” said Hamish Harding, chairman of Action Aviation. He noted that he is finding them in places such as China, but that raises other complexities. “The Chinese sellers who used to be a bit flexible are now being very inflexible. They want everything bought as is,” Harding said. “You’re lucky if you get out of China and close in Singapore, but contracts are pretty one-sided right now.”
But, he added, if a buyer wants a high-end aircraft, China, Russia, and certain other countries might have them.
He also said buyers can create the sell-with price. He cited as an example an aircraft owner who might be taking a new model next year and wasn’t anticipating selling just yet may be willing at the right price.
However, new buyers are coming into the market unprepared. He noted new clients will come in with dollar figures in mind without any concept of the right aircraft that would fit their needs.
