Three things landed on this market in the space of ten days: a presidential threat to shut Bombardier out of the United States, $20 billion of Canadian tariffs taking effect, and the first Federal Reserve rate increase in more than three years.
None of it has slowed the aircraft that are actually trading. August pre-owned sales ran 12% ahead of last year, the best large-cabin jets are clearing in under three months, and the share of the fleet for sale is the lowest we've seen in over a decade.
What has changed is the cost of waiting. Money is dearer than it was a month ago, and the year-end window that the tax code rewards is now fourteen weeks away.
Start with the money. On September 16 the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate a quarter point to 3.75–4.00%, its first increase since 2023, with inflation running at 3.4% and energy prices pushed higher by the conflict in the Middle East. The committee's own projections pencil in one more increase before the year is out. For anyone financing an aircraft, that is the first time in this cycle the direction of travel has turned against the buyer.
Then the trade fight. On September 7 the President said Bombardier could no longer sell into the U.S. unless it builds here; Canada's retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion of American goods took effect two days later. As of this writing it remains a statement, not a policy. Bombardier has pointed out that it builds in ten U.S. states, sources more than half its components from American suppliers and spends $2.5 billion a year with them, and the pushback has come from an unusual coalition: a Republican senator, the Wichita workforce, and the U.S. customers who would be left holding multi-year delivery positions. We think a formal ban is unlikely. We also think the uncertainty alone is enough to make some Global and Challenger buyers hesitate, which is exactly when a well-prepared pre-owned example finds its buyer.
Underneath the headlines, the pre-owned market is doing what it has done all summer: rewarding good aircraft and ignoring tired ones. August sales were up 12% year over year, three quarters of listings that came off the market did so because they sold, and the trailing twelve months now count 1,219 jet transactions against 1,088 a year earlier. Large-cabin aircraft are the fastest-moving segment at a median 79 days — and the prices those aircraft actually trade at are up 13% even as average asking prices have fallen by a third. Read those two numbers together and the story is clear: young, high-value jets are selling; older, cheaper ones are sitting and dragging the averages down.
Supply has not loosened. Only 6.6% of the world fleet is listed for sale, down from 7.3% a year ago, and heavy jets sit at 5.2%. Nearly three quarters of what is listed is sixteen years old or more. Manufacturers delivered 466 aircraft in the first half, 6.6% more than last year, on a combined backlog of $58 billion — so new supply is arriving, but almost all of it is already spoken for. Flight activity, the demand signal that leads everything else, is running 3.5% ahead of 2025 for the year, with North America up nearly 5% and carrying 71% of the world's business jet departures.
The gap between asking and selling prices on older large-cabin aircraft is as wide as we have seen it, which is where the negotiating room is. But the aircraft you actually want — young, well-maintained, sensibly priced — is trading in under three months and is not getting cheaper. With rates now rising, locking financing terms early in a deal matters more than it did in August. And remember that bonus depreciation turns on the date the aircraft is placed in service, not the date you sign: a December closing that slips into January is a 2027 deduction.
Buyers are paying up for aircraft that are ready to go and walking past those that are not. If your aircraft is priced against last year's asking prices rather than this year's transaction prices, it will sit; if it is priced against what comparable aircraft are actually closing at, it will move — and right now it will move quickly. The fourth quarter is the strongest selling window of the year, and the buyers who need a placed-in-service date before December 31 are already looking.
Nothing about the ownership, operation or resale of a Global, Challenger or Learjet in the United States has changed, and we do not expect it to. If anything, a period of uncertainty around new-aircraft deliveries tends to send buyers toward good pre-owned examples of the same types. If you have been considering a sale, the next few weeks are worth a conversation.
October is the busiest month on the business aviation calendar, and this one arrives with more open questions than usual. NBAA-BACE runs October 20–22 in Las Vegas; expect manufacturers to use it to show confidence — delivery milestones, order announcements, cabin reveals — and expect Bombardier's presence there to be watched closely for any signal on the U.S. question. The Federal Reserve meets again on October 27–28, and the market is already leaning toward a second increase. The third-quarter transaction data lands in the first half of the month and will tell us whether August's 12% was a bounce or a trend; we think the latter.
Our expectation is a fourth quarter that looks like the last two: firm demand for late-model aircraft, a widening spread between what tired aircraft ask and what they get, and a crowded run into December as buyers race the placed-in-service deadline. The practical constraint in that race is not money or inventory — it is pre-buy inspection slots and delivery logistics, which fill up from mid-November. A buyer who wants a 2026 deduction should be under contract by early November, not looking in December.
If you want to talk through what any of this means for your aircraft, or for the one you are considering, that is the conversation we have with clients every week.