Changes

September 2026

Business aviation is changing. It always has.

Aircraft fly farther, faster. Today’s cabins are hyper-connected. Engines are ultra-reliable and progressively more efficient. Advances in avionics, connectivity, and lightweight materials are transforming the way we think about the art of the possible in next-gen aircraft designs. Aircraft and systems talk to each other, and it is up to us to monitor, manage, and act upon the signals that the machines are generating.

 At precisely the same time, business aviation’s core customers are also changing. The generational transition we long talked about arrived several years ago. We now know that Baby Boomers really did mean it when they said they were going to retire and were not coming back into the workforce post-pandemic.

They finally did it, swapping the Herman Miller for the folding beach chair. While that may not be pleasing their chiropractors, the fact is that they’ve made these changes and they aren’t coming back. They have moved on. They are done doing what they did. It is time for other things, other experiences, other discoveries.

The good news is that many of our industry’s more experienced decision-makers haven’t disappeared from business aviation. They still own airplanes or shares of them. They still even sit in their familiar command seat in the cabin. But increasingly, they are settled in knowing that someone else is in the thick of things, making the judgment calls and decisions. And that someone is younger, self-assured, and self-aware. The money is now theirs to invest; the business is theirs to lead.

Consider the evidence.

Capgemini’s 2026 World Wealth Report revealed that global high-net-worth individual wealth increased 8.7% in 2025 to $98.3 trillion. By comparison, the world economy grew at 3.3% in real terms. In other words, HNWI wealth expanded at roughly 2.6 times the rate of global GDP. Capgemini also reports that the ultra-HNWI population grew 9.4%, making it the fastest-growing wealth segment amongst those it analyzes.

Generational wealth handoff is not a theoretical construct. Altrata estimates that 65% of today’s ultra-wealthy are Baby Boomers or members of the so-called Silent Generation. By 2040, it projects that 80% will be Generation X, Millennials or Generation Z. Along the way, an estimated $31 trillion is expected to transfer to younger generations by 2033.

Jetcraft reports that buyers under 45 years of age represented 29% of its pre-owned aircraft customers in 2024, nearly twice the share of a decade earlier.

Customers are increasingly international. Altrata reports that more than one-third of UHNWIs earned a higher-education degree outside their country of birth, while almost one in five owns or partially-owns business interests headquartered outside their primary country of residence.

Rapidly expanding wealth holdings and investment portfolios. Massive generational wealth transfers. Younger buyers and an increasingly global customer base. Business aviation leaders should lean in and take note - these are not demographic footnotes. These are sea changes within business aviation’s core customer base.

Some of these new customers inherited their wealth. Many created it. They include entrepreneurs, technology founders, investors, executives and others who became highly successful at comparatively young ages.

They also experienced the world differently from the generations before them.

International travel wasn’t extraordinary to them. It was just another Tuesday.

They went away to university, traveled extensively, built friendships and businesses across borders and became accustomed to working wherever they happened to be. Technology put the world in the palms of their hands. Remote work loosened geographic ties even further.

Today, AI is accelerating these changes exponentially, shrinking our globe. Business aviation does the same, adding the human touch.

How these customers access business aviation is changing simultaneously. Honeywell reports that the global fractional fleet has grown more than 65% since 2019. Even among operators of wholly owned aircraft in its survey, 12% also owned fractional shares and another 15% were considering them.

For business aviation, these changes are not lost customers or addressable markets. These are reflections of customers defining business aviation in their own terms, by access rather than simply by ownership.

Before contacting an OEM, broker, financier or advisor, today’s customers have almost certainly researched the aircraft, compared operating costs, examined airport performance, investigated connectivity, formed their own opinion about financing and depreciation, and even isolated their favorite brand, aircraft model, and preferred points of access.

But the value of the expert is changing.

Possessing information is no longer enough when a customer can summon enormous amounts of it in seconds. The real value increasingly lies in judgment, experience, interpretation and trust, knowing which information matters and which doesn’t.

Customer expectations are also high. Capgemini found that only 17% of HNWIs believe their wealth-advisory experience is seamless and personalized. That’s an opportunity for change.

David Bowie recorded Changes more than half a century ago, exploring reinvention and reimagination - the moments of discovery when we realize that we are transitioning to someone new.

For ourselves and our industry, we think that these are the good times, some golden years.

Aircraft and aviation services take years to design and perfect. People change. Customers change. Environments change. And, in our experience, change is ultimately and mostly for the better.

With this issue of PULSE, we are pleased to introduce two regular contributors from the RVA team. Dean Roberts, Senior Vice President, Strategy & Development, will take a deeper look at topics of strategic importance to the industry and our readers, beginning in this issue with the large-cabin business jet segment.

Gabrielle Gagnon, Research & Analytics Manager, will bring the perspective of an emerging industry leader to Runway for Rookies, a column designed to demystify business aviation for readers who may be less familiar with its language, terminology, and industry vernacular.

And if those changes really are happening at the speed of sound, it’s time to push the throttles forward.

According to our on-going research and outreach with the business aircraft owner / operator community, interest in very fast business aircraft is a worldwide phenomenon. While many in this community do not believe that they are likely to have a need or budget for aircraft at the upper end of the market, we consistently find that a core group of prospective customers is more than eager for what they believe is the next natural progression in technology development – supersonic business jets with enough range and airport compatibility to meaningfully shorten long-distance total travel times. Fully 3/4ths of respondents to our Q3 2026 RVantage Survey indicated that time savings was the single most persuasive feature of a supersonic business jet.

Jet fuel prices have increased sharply throughout 2026, reflecting the impacts of geopolitical conflicts, most notably disrupting the flow of crude oil in and around the Persian Gulf. In the U.S., Jet A prices have more than doubled in the first 9 months of this year on a Dollars per U.S. Gallon basis, significantly upping the costs of business aircraft operations, crew air travel, and parts shipments. As we were completing this issue of RVA PULSE, the average full-service JET A fuel price across 5 different FBOs at Teterboro Airport, NJ was $U.S. 10.90. With no end in sight to the U.S.-Iran war, the prospect for a return to lower and more stable fuel prices is remote at best at this time.

Anticipating the continuation of higher JET A prices, we asked owners / operators to reflect on how fuel price changes have impacted their flight activities. Amongst those who provided an opinion, almost 40% agreed that recent increases in global fuel prices have curtailed utilization.

Fuel price sources: U.S. Gulf Coast kerosene-type jet fuel prices through September 4, 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), FRED; Teterboro, NJ JET A fuel prices, GlobalAir.

While it may be difficult to recall with precision, it was not that long ago that many of the world’s advanced economies followed a zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP). For two years beginning in March 2020, the U.S. Federal Funds Effective Rate was lowered to a point just above zero as part of a worldwide rapid reaction to the COVID pandemic. Since the Spring of 2022, rates have rebounded steadily to combat inflation. In our Q3 2026 Survey, we asked respondents to reflect upon the impact of a 100-basis point (i.e., 1.0%) change in interest rates on business aircraft purchasing over the next 24-month time period. While the majority of respondents indicated that such a change would not affect purchase likelihood, more than 1/3rd suggested that a 1%-point increase would make it less likely that they / their organization would make a purchase.

Interest rate source: U.S. Federal Funds Effective Rate, FRED.

For much of the post pandemic period, the Large Cabin business jet market has been waiting to normalize. Perhaps we should begin asking whether it already has.

For this analysis, we use the combined results of Bombardier, Dassault and Gulfstream as a practical proxy for the Large Cabin market. It is not a precise segment definition, but together they provide a useful lens on the upper end of business aviation.

The chart below tells an intriguing story. Annualized sales, our proxy for the current production run rate, have risen from approximately $16 billion in late 2020 to a record $26.5 billion in Q2 2026. That growth could almost certainly have happened faster. For several years, production increases were constrained less by demand than by supply chain disruption and shortages of critical components. Those constraints have not disappeared, but they are clearly easing, allowing manufacturers finally to convert more of their accumulated backlog into deliveries.

Yet despite this substantial increase in output, backlogs still represent an estimated 1.9 years of production and, more interestingly, backlog coverage is rising again.

“Years of production” is simply backlog divided by annualized sales: a proxy for how many years of today’s production are already spoken for.

There is no magic number, but some useful rules of thumb apply. Much above two years and manufacturers begin considering production increases because customers may be unwilling to wait that long. As backlog approaches one year, the opposite question arises. Between the two lies something of a comfort zone, balancing customer lead times, production stability and risk.

Following the post pandemic surge, backlog coverage behaved much as expected. It climbed to approximately 2.3 years in 2022 before declining to 1.6 years in early 2025 as manufacturers increased output. But then something changed. Backlog coverage began climbing again, reaching 1.9 years by Q2 2026.

That raises some interesting questions.

First, is underlying demand simply stronger than we think? As supply constraints ease and production rises, we might expect manufacturers to work through those extraordinary post pandemic order books. Instead, new demand appears sufficient not merely to sustain backlog, but to rebuild it. Perhaps the demand cycle simply has further to run.

But there is a more structural possibility. Has the market itself become larger? If manufacturers can sustain something approaching today’s production levels without materially eroding backlog, the Large Cabin market may now be capable of absorbing a structurally higher level of output.

And finally, what exactly does “normal” now look like?

It would be dangerous to infer structural change from one indicator. But perhaps we should at least entertain the possibility that 1.5 to 2 years of backlog is not simply an aberration waiting to be worked off, but an early indication of a new equilibrium for a larger Large Cabin market.

What if we are waiting for backlog to normalize to a level that no longer represents normal? That’s a tough judgment call.

When I joined the Rolland Vincent Associates (RVA) team as a research analyst, I was completely new not only to business aviation, but to aviation in general. Since then, most of my understanding of the industry has come from doing what I do every day: working with data, analyzing industry trends, and asking questions. This work has helped me learn how all the pieces fit together. Runway for Rookies grew out of that experience.

As I continue building my understanding of the industry, this series gives me an opportunity to dig deeper into the topics that make business aviation tick and share what I find with others who may also be rookies to the industry. And if you’ve been around the industry for a while, perhaps it can offer the occasional refresher, or even a new perspective as the industry continues to evolve. I hope to answer any newcomers’ burning questions, like ‘What even is business aviation?’ Or ‘Why is everything an acronym?!’. Think of it as learning the skies, one step at a time.

In this first article, we’ll take a high-level look at business aviation from cruising altitude. Before we can dive into the details, we need to get the basics down and understand how the industry works.

So, what even is business aviation? Business aviation is simply the use of any general aviation aircraft for business purposes. This might mean shuttling executives and employees, moving cargo, or reaching locations that are difficult to access through regular scheduled airline service.

What business aviation looks like in practice varies widely. At one end are large, international companies with dedicated flight departments, pilots, and long-range jets capable of carrying more than 20 passengers. At the other are smaller companies and organizations using a single-engine aircraft or helicopter to support their day-to-day operations. Most operators actually fall on the smaller side, with the majority of companies operating just one aircraft. Despite the difference in scale of operation, they share the flexibility that business aircraft provide, which allows organizations to travel on their own schedules, reach more destinations, improve privacy and security, and make better use of time while traveling.

Operating an aircraft doesn’t necessarily mean owning one outright. The way people access business aircraft usually comes down to how often they fly, how much flexibility they want, and how much responsibility they are willing to take on.

Full ownership offers the most control, but it also comes with the highest costs and the responsibility of managing the aircraft. Fractional ownership is more like buying a share of an aircraft, giving users access to a set amount of flying each year. Leasing offers another way to use an aircraft without purchasing it in full. Charter works more like renting a car on vacation, travelers book an aircraft as needed, trip by trip, making it a practical option for less frequent flyers. Jet cards fall somewhere in between, typically allowing users to prepay for a set number of flight hours without taking on the commitment of ownership.

Business aviation is supported by a whole network of companies and professionals, each doing their part to keep aircraft flying and the industry moving.

Original equipment manufacturers (OEM) design and build the aircraft, while fixed-base operators (FBO) are the teams on the ground, providing things like fueling, parking, passenger handling, and other airport services. Maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) providers and technicians keep aircraft safe and airworthy through inspections, repairs, upgrades, and regular maintenance. Brokers help people buy, sell, or charter aircraft, while lenders, financiers, insurers, and other advisors help navigate the financial and legal side of ownership and operation. Add in pilots, flight departments, management companies, airports, operators, and other service providers, and you start to see just how many moving parts there are behind every flight.

Alongside this network of industry players is an equally diverse range of aircraft.

Business aircraft are generally grouped into size categories based on things like cabin size, passenger capacity, range, and aircraft weight, although the exact definitions can differ by manufacturer or data source. Broadly, the market ranges from very light and light jets, typically used for shorter trips and smaller groups. From there, midsize and super-midsize aircraft that offer more space and range, while large and long-range jets are built for bigger groups and longer, even intercontinental, trips. Turboprops are usually treated as their own category and are especially useful for shorter routes and getting into smaller airports.

The global business jet fleet is made up of roughly 25,500 aircraft (excluding turboprops). While those aircraft are produced by a range of manufacturers, a handful of major OEMs account for much of the fleet. The two largest represent roughly half of business jets in service worldwide, while five of the industry’s major manufacturers account for about three quarters of the fleet. Those major players include Bombardier, Dassault Aviation, Embraer, Gulfstream, and Textron Aviation, but more on them in future issues.

When it comes to geography, the fleet is far from evenly spread. North America accounts for about 62.7% of business aircraft worldwide, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean at about 15.1%, Europe at about 10.2%, Asia-Pacific at about 6.4%, and the Middle East and Africa sitting at about 4.8%. Although North America remains by far the largest market, business aviation has a significant global footprint.

Phew… that’s a lot of information for one flight. Ultimately, business aviation is much more than the aircraft themselves. It is the people, companies, services, and systems that keep the industry moving. It is a big, complex industry, and this was only the cruising-altitude view. For now, consider this the foundation for everything we’ll explore next.

Thank you for reading the very first issue of Runway for Rookies! Future issues will take a closer look at the aircraft, companies, people, trends, and yes, the seemingly endless list of acronyms that make up the industry. There’s a lot to learn, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

Be in the room where it happens. Join titans of business aviation at the historic Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on February 15–16 for RVA Summit 2027. Over a day and a half, connect with senior industry leaders, hear fresh intelligence and candid perspectives, and explore the trends and decisions shaping what comes next. Come for the insights. Leave with new connections and a clearer view of the road ahead. Register today.

Rolland Vincent Associates – RVA – is an independent strategic advisory firm that provides proprietary market intelligence, forecasting, and executive counsel to senior leaders across the global business aviation industry. Since its founding in 2009, RVA has earned the trust and loyalty of a blue-chip international clientele through its independent, data-driven, and pragmatic approach to understanding the forces shaping business aviation. 

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© Rolland Vincent Associates, LLC 2026