Honeywell's business and general aviation division presented its twenty-first annual Business Aviation Outlook and the long-term sales prognosis is good. Honeywell believes that 14,000 business jets (2,100 of them very light jets) worth $223 billion will be delivered between 2007 and 2017.
The company said that 2007 was already shaping up as a record year, with 446 jets worth $8.3 billion already delivered. This represents an 11-percent increase over the number of aircraft delivered by this time last year. More than 900 new business jets had been ordered in the first half of 2007; more than 50 percent of those orders came from international clients. Fractional ownerships firms took delivery of 52 new jets in the first half of 2007.
Honeywell said that market growth appears strongest in Asia, where 78.7 percent of operators reported plans to replace or expand their business aircraft fleets in the next five years; 50.7 percent of the Middle East/Africa market expects to expand or replace; 47.4 percent of the European market; and 38.4 percent of the Latin American market. North America was the most sluggish in this respect, with just 20.4 percent saying they'd expand or replace aircraft. This represents a figure very close to that reported in Honeywell's forecasts for 2005 and 2006.
Just over one-half of the five-year demand for new business jets will come from outside the United States, Honeywell said. This dramatic new trend is due to the relatively weak, 3 percent U.S. economic growth rate, the strength of the euro, and the 20-percent increase growth in gross domestic product (GDP) among the largest overseas markets.
In addition to the 2,100 VLJs included in the business jet forecast, Honeywell estimates another 8,000 to 9,000 will be built over the next decade, nearly double the number estimated by last year's Business Aviation Outlook.
Some 1,300 business jets per year should be delivered from 2007-2009, Honeywell estimated. Then deliveries should ramp up to 1,200 to 1,400 per year in 2009-2011.
The Outlook is determined through surveys of 1,519 corporate flight departments around the world, plus aircraft manufacturers and other sources.
Thomas A. Horne
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