With the current state of the economy, businesses losing corporate value, and customers deferring deliveries of corporate jets... what's the sense of feeling out there?

 

It's hurting my company, although we don't work with jets, we sell piston and turbo-props. The TBM's are holding fairly strong, but everything else isn't at the current moment until some credit can be opened up.

 

We are about 70/30 intl customers at the moment for our jets. We have seen some slow down, but we still have a 3.5 yr backlog keeping the money flowing. Hopefully that will insulate us until the US economy recovers.

 

The US economy is in the worst shape it's been in since the mid-1930s when the buildup to WW II started putting people back to work. That is nothing but bad news for aviation in general, but particularly corporate aviation and probably worse for the imitators (aircraft management companies, 135 operators and fractionals.) When the money supply shrinks, the airplanes are the first to go. There are already a lot of pilots losing their jobs and it's getting worse. GM and Ford shut down today and they are just the start. Hundreds of airplanes are on the market and their value is about half what it was a year ago. Credit is tight and is not going to loosen up anytime soon. I talked to an aircraft dealer who told me he is buying airplanes now in anticipation of a turnaround around June. He's probably right about the month but it will probably be June, 2013, if then.