General aviation deliveries experienced an overall drop in the first quarter from the same period last year, according to numbers released last month by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, but the decline was not as severe as that seen between 2008 and 2009, adding fuel to the speculation that the industry may have weathered the worst of the recent downturn. While overall deliveries were down 15 percent in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year, industry billings rose more than 7 percent, from $4.33 billion to $4.64 billion, thanks largely to international deliveries of large-cabin, long-range jets. “These numbers are being released on the heels of the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition, where many of our manufacturers noted that the market seems to be stabilizing,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce. “Reported flight activity from the FAA and Eurocontrol is on an upward trend and the used aircraft inventory is slowly decreasing. However, these first-quarter figures reveal that our industry is far from a recovery.”
Manufacturers delivered 164 business jets in the first three months of the year–their lowest output since the first quarter of 2005–and a decline of approximately 14 percent over the same period last year. Yet despite the fall, deliveries were up for long-range aircraft such as Bombardier’s Challenger 605 and Globals, Dassault’s Falcon 7X and Hawker Beechcraft’s Hawker 4000, while Gulfstream handed over only two fewer of its large-cabin jets. Both Airbus and Boeing delivered more bizliners this year than in the first quarter of last year, increasing their billings by $293 million and $52.5 million, respectively, year-over-year.
