Avionics supplier warns of stagnant business aviation market
A major avionics and systems suppler has bad news for a business aviation industry hoping to recover to peak production levels from a decade ago.
“We’ve been forecasting a recovery of business jets for a number of years. We’ve been, like a lot of people, consistently wrong,” says Patrick Allen, senior vice-president and chief financial officer of Rockwell Collins, in a 22 February appearance at the Barclay’s Select Industrial Conference.
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Business aviation has never fully recovered from the global financial crisis that wiped out demand for light and some mid-size jets after 2009. Meanwhile, demand for ultra-long jets has recently sputtered after a strong performance through the period of the global financial crisis, as business aviation watchers have detected a shift in demand from owner-operators to fractional fleets that divide a single aircraft among multiple owners.
“Those peak production rates in 2007 and ’08 we just don’t believe are replicable,” Taylor adds. “There’s been a fundamental change in that market. People are moving more towards fractionals that just require less aircraft to fill that need.”
The avionics supplier for Beechcraft turboprops, light Cessna Citation jets and Bombardier’s ultra-long-range Global series now expects the business aviation segment to achieve flat to modest growth over the long-term.
“We don’t see [business aviation] as being a long-term significant growth area,” Taylor says. “I hope we’re wrong, but that’s how we look at it today.”
