Page 15 - March 2022

The second major factor is one I’ve been talking about for years – the aging fleet of aircraft. The reality is that many more King Airs were built in the 1980s than in any year in the last several decades. If you then consider all the Cheyenne, Conquest, Merlin, Commander and Mitsubishi models that were also built at that time, but are no longer manufactured, do you begin to grasp the enormity of this problem? As I said earlier, we can’t build our way out of this problem.
To fully understand why this current market cycle is so unprec- edented, you must look back at the last decade. The market for turbine aircraft has been strong for 10 years. We were already seeing a shortage of nice, newer model aircraft of all varieties. This isn’t like the 2005- 2008 boom in aircraft sales that was certainly a seller’s market and prices went up and inventory levels did decline, but not like this. That boom
“The market for turbine aircraft has been strong for 10 years. We were already seeing a shortage of nice, newer model aircraft ... ”
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MARCH 2022
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 13