As most in the industry have come to understand, business aviation follows the general economy, but lags behind it by a year or two. The last few years were no exception. If you look at past issues of AIN, you’ll see that business aviation manufacturers were still logging record levels of deliveries in 2000 and 2001, even though the stock market tanked in the spring of 2000 and 9/11 sent shockwaves through the economy for at least a year-and-a-half, and in many ways still does. It wasn’t until last year that deliveries of new aircraft dropped off significantly, and the malaise continues this year. Next year appears somewhat promising in that it doesn’t look like it will be any worse than this year and may be a little better. But even if the general economy continues its upward trend of the last six months, which is far from assured according to many observers, business aviation is not likely to show a significant increase until 2005 or 2006.
The airplane manufacturers and startups are well aware of this and are responding. All have new projects under way, a few of which, such as the Falcon 7X and a slew of very light jets and turboprops, are completely new designs. But all the “new” jets introduced at the NBAA Convention last month in Orlando, Fla., by the big OEMs–the Bombardier XRS, Cessna Citation XLS and Gulfstream 450–are really just upgrades of current offerings. This is a clear and realistic reflection of the current state of the industry and economy, as well as a pragmatic assessment of the next few years. When there is continued uncertainty in the market, it’s hard to justify new investment in clean-sheet designs.
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