Latest / VREF | The Truth About the Aviation Market / Why Some Airplanes Sell In Days While Others Just Sit | EP 47
Transcript
- Addison: Right now, somewhere in America, a broker is listing an airplane that will sell before the ad finishes uploading to the internet. And across town, another broker just cut the price for the third time on the same model year. Everyone keeps asking me if the market is up or if the market is down. I think that's the wrong question. The right question is, which market? Welcome back to the truth about the market. I'm your host, Jason Zilberbrand. I'm president of VRef. I've appraised nearly every type of aircraft out there. My clients range from private owners to lenders, insurance companies, operators, Fortune 500 companies, law firms, and government agencies, including the FAA. And I've owned my own aircraft, I've operated my own aircraft, I bought them for years, I sold them for years, I even financed them, and I have spent decades watching how this market behaves, and I know when conditions change. So when I talk about the aircraft market, it really is not theory, it's not social media commentary, it's definitely not scraped internet data wrapped in some fancy chart, but it is real world transactional experience. And it's also worth mentioning, this podcast has no sponsors, we have no advertisers, we have no outside influence, nobody pays for my opinion, and nobody dictates my conclusions, and that's because aviation is a capital intensive market. And I think the market punishes misinformation every single time. So welcome back, everybody. In every slowdown I've studied, and between the appraisal work and the litigation work and the forty plus years of V ref data, I've studied a lot of them. There are always airplanes that still sell in days, sellers who still get multiple calls the first week. If you've read an aviation headline lately, you've heard the same story. The market is slowing down, and if you treat aviation as one giant bucket, there's some truth in it. But aviation has never worked as one bucket. It's dozens of markets moving on their own cycles, driven by their own buyers for their own reasons, and some of them are ignoring the headlines completely. So today, instead of another the market is slowing episode, I want to flip it and talk about where the strength still exists. Specifically, two segments that continue to surprise me quarter after quarter. Owner operator high performance singles and piston trainers, two very different markets, two very different buyers, and one thing in common that I'll come back to in a few. See if you can spot it before I say it. And stick around to the end because I'm going to tell you about something we've been building at V Ref for a very long time. I think it's going to change how people research and buy aircraft. So let's start with the airplanes everybody wants. The PA 46 family. The Malibu, the Mirage, the Matrix, the Meridian, the Jetprop Conversions, M500s, 600s. If you've shopped for one lately, you know the good ones are gone before you finish reading the listing. And before I go further, I want to tip my hat. I want to credit the folks at KC Aviation for their fantastic podcast and for bringing this to my attention, because I'll admit it, I sometimes focus on the big general picture and forget about the individual markets underneath it. And they live and breathe the P8046 world, and they reminded me that the real story is always down at the individual market level. If you love aviation podcasts like I do, please do me a favor, go check theirs out. It's one of the better ones out there. So, why is this segment so resilient? Well, it's because these airplanes sit at a point almost nothing else touches, where capability and operating economics intersect. And historically, this segment has been remarkably well isolated from the broader market. And that's not an accident. Let's start with operating costs. Move from a high performance single into a twin turboprop or even a much larger single engine turboprop, and the cost curve doesn't climb. It jumps astronomically. Two overhauls, more fuel, more insurance, heavier maintenance. The operating costs of these singles are simply more palatable than their bigger brothers. Don't forget that. That keeps a deep pool of buyers who genuinely Can afford to own them and fly them, and deep markets bend where thin markets crack. Then you got the mission profile. Because these airplanes do an awful lot. One pilot, pressurization, so your family isn't wearing canoelas at 17,000 feet, real speed in the flight levels, coast-to-coast capability, room for the family in the bags, maybe even the dogs. You're getting 80% of the turbine mission for a fraction of the cost per hour. And insurance is still attainable for a proficient reoccurrent owner pilot. Which, after what insurance has done to twins and older jets, is no small thing. Every buyer and underwriter pushes out of a twin lens right back in this segment. And here's the structural piece most people miss. These are the natural upgrade aircraft. When owners step up from, say, a Bonanza or a Saratoga or a Cirrus, this is where they go. And a lot of them stay. They never go to a jet. The math doesn't justify it for their mission. This is where a huge share of owner pilots cap out. So this segment is constantly fed from below and rarely loses owners out of the top. And let's not forget, it is a cult following. It's PA 46 people are PA46 people, and jet prop owners might be the most loyal group in general aviation. And if you have a demand structure most markets would kill for, this is it. So One point I want to emphasize, because it's the whole story. These airplanes aren't purchased because they're flashy. They're purchased because they solve problems. This is the airplane that turns a two-day airline ordeal with a connection flight through a hub and a four-hour direct flight from the airport, 10 minutes from your house. The one that replaces four airline segments and a rental car every month. For a lot of owners, it's the Forever airplane. And when an airplane solves real transportation problems, Its market doesn't follow the headlines, it follows the mission. Now let's look at the actual VRF numbers because on this show the data does the talking, even when it complicates the story. Across more than 1600 sold transactions in the PA 46 family, every variant, the Malibu through the M600, the median time from listing to sale is 142 days. The turbine models on the newer end have been beating that family benchmark. The median time for the M600 is 111 days in 2025. It's only up eight days so far this year. The meridian was the fastest mover of all in 24. 90 days was its average total time to resell. It's cooled substantially. It's at 173 days in 2026, and it's worth watching. So, no, not every one of these sells overnight. But here's the number that tells the real story. The fastest sales in this data set closed in two days. Seven days, fourteen days, while the slowest examples of the same family sat for years, same airplane on paper, widely different outcomes. That spread's not the average. It's the story, and it's exactly what I want to unpack next. Whenever I say inventory is thin here, somebody hears prices must be going through the roof. Let me stop that right there. Low inventory does not automatically mean high prices. In the PA forty six world, it means owners keep these airplanes longer. It's a forever airplane. Remember that. Buyers know exactly what they want, down to the engine program, the panel, every piece of avionics. And here's the Rob and Casey did a great job of talking about it. Clean examples are rare. And they're even rarer to hit the market. You put all that together, and good airplanes never really hit the open market. They trade through relationships, good brokers, clubs. Sometimes before listing goes live, actually more often than not. And here's the line. I want you to remember, the challenge isn't locating a Malibu or a Meridian. It's locating one you actually want to own. Because here's the downside nobody puts in the listing. These airplanes tend to have a lot of hidden issues. This is a complex, pressurized, systems heavy piece of equipment. It needs real upkeep every year, whether the owner felt like writing the checks or not. Corrosion where a pressurized aluminum airframe lived matters. Deferred maintenance matters. A cheat PA46 is the most expensive PA46 you can buy, and the brokers know that. Engine history, especially on piston malabooza Mirages, the pressurization system, the panel, legacy versus modern avionics, that could be over six figures today, guys. And damage history follows an airplane forever because these buyers do their homework, and the pre-buy shops do it twice. So, the exceptional example: complete logbooks, no damage. Modern panel. They do trade in days, not months. That's the two-day end of the spread I just gave you. The average one sits, and the neglected one becomes a project nobody wants. The gap between exceptional and average is wider in this segment than almost anywhere else in Journal Aviation. If you're buying here, the playbook hasn't changed in 20 years. The bre best pre-buy you can find at a shop that knows this type, read every logbook before you fall in love with it, and be ready to move fast on the right airplane. Slow on research, fast on the trigger. And the current inventory data set proves it. M600s sitting on the market right now have a median of over 200 days. Nearly double for the median of M600s that actually sold. Meridians, it's the exact same thing. The good airplanes already sold. What's on the listing sites is buying a large what the market has already looked at and passed on. And you've heard me say this a lot. So when someone says there's plenty of inventory, look closer. There's plenty of leftovers. And in a segment where two identical airplanes can be a quarter million dollars apart on condition, the sold data is the only thing that keeps you honest. Hold that thought. It's coming back at the end. And let's take a quick pause before we get into trainers. And first, a sincere thank you for supporting the show. We run it with no sponsors and no advertisers, which means you, the listeners, are the reason it exists. If you're getting value out of it, three small things make a huge difference. Please hit like on the episode. Leave us a review wherever you listen, and share it with one person who's buying, selling, or lending on an airplane right now. That's how this show grows. And keep sending me your questions. Listener questions become episodes. If you need to know what an aircraft is actually worth, that's what we do all day at VRef. So please visit vref.com and v ref it before you buy, sell your next aircraft. So now the other market that just won't slow down. If there's one segment that has ignored almost every downturn I have ever studied, it's the piston single engine trainer market. This market is so hot you couldn't cool down if you tried. It genuinely does not matter what the broader environment is doing. 172s, 182s, Archers, Diamonds, Ciruses, the demand drivers aren't just present right now. They're stacked. The pilot shortage hasn't gone anywhere. I know. Some people don't think it's real. And every airline career starts in a 172 or an Archer. But flight schools are running airplanes as hard as the maintenance schedule allows and still turning students away. You gotta remember that they're turning kids away. University programs keep expanding. International training organizations are buying North American airframes in volume. And the quiet one, replacement demand. The existing trainer fleet is old and it's tired, flying hundreds, if not thousands of hours a year. And those airplanes wear out, they're ridden hard, they're put away wet, and everyone has to be replaced. With either a brand new airplane at new prices or a clean used one. That's the whole menu. And that's the floor under used trainer values and its structure. And here's the distinction that separates this market from almost everything else in GA. This is not speculative buying. Nobody buys at 172 hoping it appreciates. These are revenue-producing assets. A flight school buys a trainer the way a trucking company buys a truck. It goes on the schedule the day it arrives. And earns its keep every month. Demand tied to revenue doesn't evaporate when headlines turn negative. A school with hundreds of students on the waiting list doesn't care what the Fed did last Wednesday. And people keep entering aviation. That's the demand driver nobody models, but everybody sees, because the flight school lobby is full on a Saturday morning, guys. And if you need proof, Cirrus handed it to us this week. They announced the track 10, a clean sheet. purpose-built trainer, three seats including an elevated observer station, a Garmin flight deck, CAPS parachute, stick shaker, and the interesting part, a turbocharged Rotex 916 up front. Yep, FedEx. It finally happened. Single lever simplicity, about 5.9 gallons an hour at 65% power. It runs on 100 low lead. It runs on 9194 unleaded. And Mogas. That fuel flexibility changes the operating cost math for a school and future proofs the airplane against whatever happens with leaded gas. Because at a base price of four hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred dollars, the US deliveries are gonna start in twenty twenty-seven and it's gonna sell out and there's gonna be a long waiting list. So now the number that proves the thesis before a single delivery. Cirrus has already sold more than one hundred of these. From thirteen professional flight schools, schools committing to a half a million dollar trainer by the dozen off of an announcement. Nobody does that on speculation. They do it because every one of those airplanes goes straight into a flight schedule and starts earning money. This is the trainer market in one data point. And the track ten wasn't even the only clean sheet announcement this week. Which brings me to a trend I want you to watch. New engines plus mosaic equals a lot of new aircraft. It's happening, guys. This is exciting. Get ready. This is what you guys have been waiting for. This is what you've been asking for. The day after Cirrus dropped the Track 10, Cubcrafters introduced the Carbon Cub ULT. And this one is genuinely different. It's a Turbine Cub, a TurboTech TPR90. It's a regenerative turboprop with 140 horsepower, and it's got dual fadeck. Push button start, single lever power, burning Jet A or diesel at around five gallons an hour with a claimed 3,000 hour TBO. Turbine reliability and Jet A availability, a piston-like fuel burn with an overhaul reserve that undercuts most piston engines. And it's going to debut at Oshkosh this month. Deposits are open, and deliveries are going to start in 2027. Here's the kicker. Base price. You ready for this? Six hundred and ninety thousand dollars. The most expensive airplane Cubcrafters has ever built. And the historic part, it's the first US manufactured tuber turboprop eligible to be flown by sport pilots under the FA's new mosaic rules. So step back and look at the pattern. For decades the power plant was the bottleneck in GA. Everything new was a hundred-year-old engine architecture burning leaded fuel. Now in one week. We got a turbocharged multi-fuel FedEx, Rotex, and a clean sheet trainer, and a small regenerative turbine and a sport pilot eligible club. The engines change and the rules change at the same time. And when that happens, you get new airplanes. I think the Cub is kind of cool. I don't think this week was a coincidence. I think it's the start of a cycle. And one more data point from the same week, Continental Aerospace is returning to US ownership, guys, and a five hundred and thirty-five million dollar deal. If you own or lend on anything with a continental up front, watch what that means for parts and support. Engines are the story right now, people, top to bottom. Which brings me to Oshkosh, because Air Venture is right around the corner. And I think you'll notice something this year. If you know where to look, everybody walks the flight line looking at the newest airplanes. That's fine. I'll be looking too. But if you want to read the market, don't just watch the airplanes. Watch where the conversations are happening. Watch the trainer manufacturers' booths. Listen for whether the conversations are nice airplane or fleet order conversations. There's a difference, and you can hear it. Watch the owner flown aircraft, the M600s, the single engine turboprops, and see whether people are kicking tires or asking about actual delivery positions. Watch the maintenance shops and upgrade companies. Because when owners are investing in airplanes, they already have, they're keeping them, And the next year's used inventory just got thinner. And this year you can watch my thesis get tested live. The track 10 will be at the Cirrus booth, and the Carbon Cub ULT will make its public debut at Cubcrafters. Go stand there for 10 minutes and listen and pay attention to the financing insurance conversations happening around the edges of the show. That's where you find out what's actually getting done versus what's water cooler talk. So the press conferences will tell you what the manufacturers want you to hear. The foot traffic will tell you what the market actually thinks. You'll learn more in the parking lot at Oshkosh than you do in the press tent. So before I let you go, I told you at the top there was something we've been working on. Here it is. And I'll start with the question I know you're already asking because it's the right question. Why does the world need another marketplace? Honest answer it doesn't. It needs fewer. And that's the whole point. There are so many marketplaces today. And none of them have the traffic controller has. Outside of social media, there are really three big ones: controller, trade a plane, and barnstormers. But a huge number of aircraft get listed outside of those three. There's broker websites, a ton of social media groups, there's type club forums and auction platforms, and buyers have no way of finding them. Because search engine optimization, SEO, it doesn't work the way it used to, and airplanes come to market through channels that never touched a classified page. Look, guys, the airplane you're looking for might be for sale right now, and you'll never see it. And even when you do find it, every listing shows you an asking price, and none of them show you what actually things sell for. You're making a six or seven figure decision with a stack of classified ads, and on what other market would anybody accept that? It's craziness. My window into this problem as an appraiser, half my time on any assignment, think about this, goes to the subject airplane, the plane that I'm appraising. The other 50% of my time goes to analyzing comps, finding every comparable airplane out there listed and sold, so the opinion of value stands on something, something that I can justify, something that's defendable. And it is so much easier to find comps when they're inside the software you're already working in. So years ago, and I'm talking years ago, I set out to collect every single aircraft for sale from everywhere, not just the big three, and populate it inside V ref. I did it because it improves workflow. It makes everything faster. And honestly, it sets VRef up for the future. When you see what we have coming, you're not gonna believe it. Because, as I said earlier, listings aren't the market, sold airplanes are the market, values come from transactions. That's been my true thesis my entire career. I've said it forever. And it's the reason VRF has existed for over 30 years. So Here's what you'll see in the next couple weeks. Our full-fledged marketplace. A lot of aircraft listed for sale. Who has them listed? The broker, their contact information right there. The owner, their contact information right there. Every sold aircraft, historical pricing, market trends, one search connected directly to V Revaluation Data. It's coming and it's gonna look amazing, which I know sounds small, but believe me. It's a big pet peeve of mine. Most classified pages look terrible. Information buried, they're form driven, they're old, they're archaic software. They look awful. You share them, they look awful. You can't print reports, they look awful. But ours doesn't, and ours is integrated. You can run values right from the listing. One click values are coming soon. Compare aircraft side by side without ever leaving V ref. When you see how clean it is and how easy it is to use, it's You're going to spend a lot more time in VRF, and honestly, that's the whole point. I'm not giving you the full tour today because I want to do it in person. We're going to unveil it properly at Oshkosh. Maybe a little bit earlier. We'll see. And next week episode covers everything, what it does, who's it for, how to get access. But I wanted you to hear it first because you're the people who've been telling me for years this is exactly what you're missing. This is what you want. So here's what I want you to do. If you're headed to Air Venture, come find me. I'll be walking the grounds all week. Brokers, owners, lenders, dealers, flight school operators, students, or if you just love airplanes, stop me. Say hi. I want to see what you're seeing in the corner of the market. I'll be recording short conversations throughout the week. Some of you might end up on a future episode. And whether you make it to Oshkosh or not, do me a favor, go to vref.com. Get on the list for early access to the marketplace because listeners of this show will be the first in the door. Info at vref.com. Send us an email. Ask us to send you the marketplace listing when it goes live. We'll do it. You'll know about it before anybody else. So here's where I'll leave you. Markets don't move together. They never have. And you've heard me say that. While some segments are cool. Others keep moving because they're solving real transportation problems. That's what aviation's about. The PA 46 buyer isn't reading headlines. He or she is trying to get his or her family home on a Sunday night, above the weather, without using airlines because they stink. The flight school isn't speculating. It's got a hundred students on a waiting list and an airplane that earns money every hour it flies. If you understand where demand still exists and why, you'll make better buying, selling, and lending decisions. And you'll avoid the most expensive mistake in the industry, and that's chasing headlines instead of data. If you're headed to Oshkosh, seriously, let's meet. If you can't make it, next week's episode covers everything I saw and we'll officially unveil what we've been building. Because at Oshkosh, everyone comes to see airplanes. I come to see the market. Before I let you go, one quick favor. And here's why it actually matters. As you've heard me say several times, this show takes no sponsors and we take no advertising. You heard me say it up top. Nobody pays for my opinions here. That's never going to change. But that also means there's no ad budget. There's nothing pushing this podcast in front of new listeners. The only way an aircraft owner, a potential buyer, an aircraft lender, or somebody who's about to walk into one of these mistakes that you constantly hear me talk about. The only way that they're going to avoid those mistakes, the only way people find out about this show is if you help it travel. So please, if you got something out of this, follow the show. Subscribe wherever you're listening. Turn the notifications on so the next episode comes straight to you. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit like and subscribe to the channel. And if you know someone who's about to buy or sell an aircraft, please forward them this episode before they purchase it. Before they sign the letter of intent, before they send the email, not after, you sharing this episode might be the most valuable thing you do for your friend all year long. A quick rating and review honestly moves the needle more than you realize. It's what tells the platforms to put real, independent, broker-free analysis in front of the people who need it, like you, 30 seconds from you, that's all I'm asking. And you've helped somebody you'll never meet avoid a six-figure mistake. I think that's a good trade. All right. That's the ask. Here's the close. This podcast exists for one reason. To analyze aircraft as capital assets without brokerage spin, without manufacturer narrative. And remember, when you need accurate, defensible, and data-driven aircraft values, there's only one name in the industry to trust. That's V ref. Visit V ref.com to V ref it today. The market is moving. It's just not moving where they're looking. I'm Jason Zilberbrand, and this is the truth about the market. Until next time, fly safe and stay smart.