The business aviation market is up 5%. So why is the pre-owned market stalling?

Pre-owned transaction growth went from +16% in December to +1% by March. Monthly data for February and March turned negative.

The pre-owned market was performing strongly through 2025. The trailing twelve-month figure still shows marginal growth, but that number is masking what actually happened. Monthly transaction data for February and March turned sharply negative. The mechanism is buyer confidence, and the data shows it moved fast once the Middle East conflict broke on February 28.

• Average days on market rose to 99 days on a Mar-26 TTM basis, up 10.3% from 90 days a year earlier
• Large Jets have fully corrected back to 2019 price levels; Small and Medium Jets are still holding above
• 75% of for-sale inventory is now 16+ years old, up from 57% in 2015 and 70% last year
• Newest aircraft (0-5 years old) represent just 5% of for-sale inventory, down from 9% in 2015

The two strongest demand predictors are both at record highs. That is what makes the pre-owned softening harder to read.

UHNWI population reached 684,000 globally in 2025. US corporate profits approached $3.8 trillion in Q4, roughly double the 2016-2019 range. Both correlate with their respective bizav activity metrics at 0.84 — among the highest relationships in the data. If the fundamentals are this supportive, the pre-owned cooling is not a structural story. It is a confidence story. And confidence can recover.

• UHNWI population projected to grow at a 5.5% CAGR through 2028, driven partly by the AI revolution and the great wealth transfer
• Global GDP held at 3.4% in 2025 but the 2026 forecast was revised down to 3.1% reflecting trade tensions and the conflict
• M&A activity rebounded to $4 trillion in 2025, best year since the 2021 peak, a tailwind for executive travel demand

The +5% departure figure is not broad-based. Fractional is pulling away from every other operator type.

Global departures grew 5%, but that number flattens a wide spread underneath it. Fractional ownership expanded 9.7% on a TTM basis, 11.3% in Q1, and 13.4% in March alone. Corporate Flight Departments declined 7.9% in Q1. Branded Charter fell 4.3%. The market is not growing uniformly. Demand is concentrating in flexible ownership models and pulling away from traditional structures.

• NetJets now sits approximately 65% above pre-COVID departure levels; Flexjet has nearly tripled since 2019
• Fractional providers captured 17% of new aircraft deliveries in 2025, up from 10% pre-pandemic
• Super Midsize Jets — the dominant fractional cabin class — average 34 hours per tail YTD, highest of any segment
• Wheels Up continues its retraction, down 20% on a Mar-26 TTM basis and now below 2019 levels

Commercial aviation disruption sent travelers to bizav in March. Washington DC bizav departures grew 18.7% while scheduled airlines fell.

A partial government shutdown in February left roughly 50,000 TSA officers without pay. Callout rates hit 42% in New Orleans and Atlanta. Against that backdrop, business jet departures grew across every affected metro in March while scheduled airline departures declined across those same cities. March 2026 recorded the largest single month of fuel uplift in the WINGX dataset. The displacement effect is real, and with multiple US airlines planning schedule cutbacks through 2026, it is not a one-month story.

• Houston: bizav +18.4% in March vs prior year; scheduled airlines -0.2%
• New York: bizav +11.3%; scheduled airlines -3.9%
• Business aviation serves 20x more unique city pairs than the top four global airlines combined
• FIFA travel demand expected to further accelerate the commercial-to-bizav shift through peak 2026 travel periods

"The fundamentals that drive long-term bizav demand — wealth creation, corporate profits, M&A activity — are all pointing in the right direction. What the pre-owned data is telling you is that short-term confidence is fragile, and right now it is being tested."