NBAA and Rolland Vincent Associates (RVA) are partnering to deliver business aviation market intelligence to NBAA members. Quarterly updates, to begin at the RVA Summit in mid-February, will provide members with “a recurring pulse on business aviation, rather than a static snapshot of the market,” according to NBAA.
The quarterly market intelligence reports will be based on RVA survey responses, including from NBAA members, and “NBAA’s perspective on the industry and policy environment to deliver exclusive, unique, and actionable insights to association members at a time when the industry is rapidly evolving.”
Market intelligence reports will be offered at various levels, starting with a free tier. More details on subscription fees will be released later.
“NBAA is the standard when it comes to member associations,” said RVA founder, co-owner, and president Rolland Vincent, “and we’ve proven over the years with over 30,000 conversations and surveys that we’ve done with owners and operators around the world that we know what we’re doing…we’re also trying to be the standard in what we do, which is market analytics, forecasting, and understanding what’s going on inside the heads of our owners and operators.”
Vincent previewed the information that will be included in the market intelligence package, highlighting the strong performance of the business jet OEMs and their more than $67 billion backlogs. “We see continuing order activity, good strength there, and the story is demand is continuing. There is no clear signal of any change there.”
Where there are signals of change is in the preowned market, he explained. “It’s like being able to monitor the pulse of an individual. We're seeing strong sales activity in preowned as well.”
Sales through August are up 12% year over year, while inventory for sale is down to 6.6% of the fleet, with availability tight in the super-midsize and large-cabin jet categories.
A potential sign of weakness is availability of very light jets, at 16%. “That’s a signal to watch,” Vincent said. “That may be a softening signal. We’re hearing quite a bit now [about] some softening in demand at the lower end of the market.”
Another element that the market intelligence product will provide NBAA members is a measurement of the mood of the market. “It’s not just the hardware and how much it’s flying or not flying. It’s what do they think?” he said.
What is affecting the mood now is economic uncertainty. “Whether it shows up as airplane purchasing or capital investing, we’re seeing some impact, especially fuel prices and other factors that are driving up the cost. Inflation is a problem in our industry, even though people have means. We’re seeing its impact in flight operations already, and certainly the outlook for the future. Prices are going up ahead of inflation quite a bit faster.”
Another important factor is aftermarket support. “[Customers] are quite unhappy with service levels when it comes to parts availability, parts prices, and service turn times,” Vincent said. “They’re waiting almost 90 days on average to get into a service center.
“Those are things we're going to monitor, watch, report on, and see how they change going forward. Because when you’re spending as much money as our clients are spending, they expect the best.”
“We’re going to be rolling out the first product in this series early next year,” said NBAA interim COO Dan Hubbard. “The survey is going out now…That’s the first step, working on this subscription-based model, and then we’re also one of the sponsors for the RVA Summit in February in D.C. Then we're looking at events after that. We’re excited about where this is going to go and how it will provide our members with a new level of intelligence in making sound decisions in how they operate their businesses and how they fly.”
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