A multi-engine, instrument rated pilot, James Wynbrandt has been an AIN and Business Jet Traveler contributor since 2003. His in-depth reporting and insightful features have won more than a dozen editorial honors, including two National Business Aviation Association Gold Wing Awards (2019; 2021), and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Barron’s, Fortune, Forbes, and Smithsonian Air &amp; Space. He has flown his Mooney M20K 252 on assignments throughout North and Central America and the Caribbean. Wynbrandt is also the author of Flying High (Wiley &amp; Sons), a biography of Jet Blue founder David Neeleman, as well as histories, references works, and books on a variety of other topics from major publishers. He lives in New York City.

Contributor - Business Aviation

James Wynbrandt

Making its EBACE debut this year, U.S.-based aircraft brokerage Guardian Jet (Y125) is showcasing Vault 2.0, the new version of the company’s client portal that delivers continually updated fleet valuation and market data. “We’ve had airplanes [for sale] on static display here,” said Michael Dwyer, managing partner of the brokerage, “but this is our first time in the exhibition hall.”

 


Guardian Jet takes an asset-management approach to the buying and selling of business jets, and maintains close contact with clients. This can pay big dividends in the preowned markets, according to the company. “We look you in the eye and say, ‘We’ll save you millions over the lifetime ownership of your aircraft,’” said Dwyer.

 


Vault 2.0—introduced at the NBAA 2017—provides clients with the real-time information Guardian uses for fleet planning. Dwyer said this approach “uses the same math and business process for guiding a 100-hour [per year] fractional owner as it does for rolling over Wal-Mart’s fleet.”

 


Guardian is demonstrating Vault 2.0 at its display on a pair of large monitors. “There’s a whole new level of transparency, asset management, and valuation data that we provide,” said Dwyer, as he showcased Vault’s power and ease of operation.

 


Vault 2.0 tracks 130 aircraft models, with the valuations of 60 refreshed about weekly, and it incorporates a variety of tools to help clients see the market on macro and micro levels. Jet Finder, for example, allows clients to search the world’s preowned aircraft inventory by make, model, asking price, age, total hours, range, and cabin size, among other variables. It even shows how each ranks in valuation against the same or similar models on the market.

 


Preowned transactions in Europe and the rest of the globe are on the upswing, Dwyer said, and the increase in buying and selling puts real-time information at a premium.

 


“The market switched in the last six months from hard to sell and easy to buy, to easy to sell and hard to buy,” according to Dwyer. He noted he’d recently been to Basel to inspect an aircraft that had been kept unhangared in the desert, and whose owner smoked in it. He determined it didn’t meet his approval, but a few months ago he wouldn’t have gone to see an aircraft fitting this description at all. “You’ve got to look at everything,” he said. That includes the information clients find in Vault 2.0.,&nbsp;Dwyer concluded.

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