Jay Mesinger, CEO and President Mesinjer Jet Sales, answers Elite Wing’s questions about the state of the pre-owned market

Pre-owned transaction volumes and values show the market is well into a post-pandemic correction phase. What are your perspectives on the market?

My sense is the market is into a balanced phase. This phase is more comfortable for all participants, higher inventory numbers allow buyers to have choice as well as opportunity to negotiate where as during the pandemic when the market was more Seller leaning, buyers did not have choice of product nor the ability to perform the due diligence that is essential to perform. Buying planes with out the full understanding of the condition will plague those buyers for years to come.

The Pandemic has certainly brought a large number of first-time business aviation users, did that wave of travelers translate to first-time pre-owned buyers?

Buyers where buying what ever they could take delivery of. Of course since there are always more pre-owned to choose from there were of course more pre-owned than new sold.

The US market is often impacted by the election year, as investors are uncertain about politicians’ attitudes towards private jet usage. What is your reading of this year’s election impact?

Neither candidate is really negative towards business aviation. One may have different depreciation thoughts, however, in general, we are not seeing a dip in activity this election cycle.

Finding maintenance slots is still difficult, as the business aviation MRO network is still suffering from supply chain and labor issues. How do you see that impacting the pre-owned market in 2024?

Shops have NEVER been busier and this impact is real and will probably persist for some time to come. The inclination of some buyers is to scale back or eliminate the pre-buy would be devastating. Buyers should be willing to forego a mandatory year end close before they should be willing to lower the level of inspection.

All US major airlines have announced significant increases to their pilot salaries, impacting most of business aviation flight department personnel costs. Did we start to see an impact of increasing operating costs on pre-owned jet demand?

I have not seen jet demand reduce however the line item for the salaries has definitely increased.