Reflections on NBAA 2018

Last week, the National Business Aircraft Association held its annual convention in Orlando, with the business aviation community leaders updating the industry on what’s new. We came away from NBAA 2018 with a feeling of cautious optimism. While the business aviation segment is growing again, the segment still hasn’t recovered to pre-2008 and great recession levels. The key players are optimistic that the industry will recover slowly over the next decade, but are carefully matching capacity to fall between provable backlogs and expected demand.

Most demand forecasts, whether from AirInsight Research, Aviation Week, or Honeywell, tend to be on the conservative side. The mix of aircraft appears to be moving upward to larger aircraft, and the OEMs are offering new models to capture additional demand. Let’s take a look at developments on a manufacturer by manufacturer basis.