According to a report from International Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA), its members saw an uptick in preowned aircraft transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020, with 554 deals closed. This followed March 2020’s “abrupt pandemic-induced plunge” in preowned aircraft sales.
IADA began tracking sales metrics on a monthly basis in April 2020, prompted by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. IADA says its members are generally responsible for 40% of preowned aircraft sales.
“In total, IADA dealers accounted for 1,011 transactions in the April-December 2020 time period, not counting preowned aircraft sales handled by our OEM members,” said Wayne Starling, executive director at IADA. “Our dealers registered 285 sales in December alone, by far the most active month of the year and double any other COVID-19-impacted month.”
IADA dealers ended the year by putting another 74 aircraft under contract in December 2020. Dealers reported that only 36 of the 554 transactions closed in the fourth quarter involved lowered prices. That contrasts with the second quarter of 2020, when 45 out of 174 transactions involved lowered prices.
“While it is way too early to say the industry has rebounded completely, as the pandemic is still raging, the activity in the preowned aircraft marketplace is certainly trending upwards across all of our dealers,” said Starling.
The organisation’s marketing arm, AircraftExchange, handled 638 transactions for aircraft that were listed exclusively by IADA dealers, worth more than US$5bn during 2020.
As of 11 January 2021, the organisation had more than 500 business aircraft for sale exclusively on its site. The aircraft range from turboprops to VVIP long-range business jets.
IADA is a professional trade association formed more than 25 years ago, promoting the growth and public understanding of the aircraft resale industry. IADA offers an accreditation programme for dealer organisations and a certification programme for individual brokers.
