Global Jet Capital predicts deals to hit $39bn in 2029
Global Jet Capital predicts business jet transactions will increase by an annual average of 3.9% for the next five years.
Global Jet Capital predicts that 3,778 business jet transactions worth $44.2bn will close in 2029, up from 3,383, worth $38.7bn, in 2025.
In its 2025 forecast the business jet financier is predicting that both the total number of transactions and the dollar amount will increase by an annual average of 3.9% for the next five years. A record 3,963 deals closed in 2021 worth $32.5bn.
“We are having a good year. We are blessed in terms of business, in terms of how the backlog is starting to build for 2026,” says Vivek Kaushal, CEO, Global Jet Capital.
“We like what we see in terms of the balance in the industry. We think it is a great signal for the market that book-to-bill ratios are right there at one-to-one, you’ve got significant backlogs and you’ve got orders coming in. The market is not overheated.”
Students of the market
Kaushal has spent much of his 30 years in business aviation finance focused on risk but believes the market is still stable.
Global Jet Capital expects deliveries of heavy jets to grow the fastest out of all models at an annual growth rate of 5.5% each year. This means that heavy jets manufactured by Bombardier, Dassault and Gulfstream will account for 32.6% of deliveries over the next five years.
“We are students of the market and I look at numbers. With the one-to-one book-to-build, there’s no real stimulus for OEMs to ramp up production,” says Kaushal. He believes that one key figure is the number of deliveries that manufacturers are getting to customers as a percentage of the total business jet fleet. In 2025 he says that new aircraft they are delivering are about 3% percent of the installed base.
“If you go back to 2008 right before the Global Financial Crisis, OEMs delivered about 8% of the installed base,” says Kaushal. “This means that if you look at the percentage of the market that is younger – let’s say, brand new to 10 years old – that peaked in 2009 at nearly 50%. Today we are down to 30% and that number is going to drop over the next few years, even as manufacturers grow deliveries slightly.” This is because between 600 to 700 aircraft will move out of the 10-year cohort each year.
“The impact of this is that this market is going to remain in that dynamic where young aircraft are right around 28% to 30% of the market, which is so different from the last decade where you had all these new aircraft delivered to people who had been speculating on delivery positions and were not happy with their purchase. That resulted in a ‘shadow market’ that everybody would talk about. Of course, this is all absent some sudden shock,” says Kaushal.
Global Jet Capital also sees opportunities with longer backlogs. “The market dynamics suit us because buying an aircraft is becoming a long-term planning process. That really plays into our strengths as experts,” he says. “We can work with buyers and their advisers to model multiple scenarios for them and give the intelligence that they need to decide how they want to proceed.”
Aircraft manufacturers require new buyers to make pre-delivery or construction finance payments and Global Jet Capital likes financing these. “We just closed a PDP [pre-delivery payment] on a super-mid cabin aircraft last week and that is for a 2028 delivery,” says Kaushal. “Pre-delivery payment financing resonates in this market where for a two- or three-year period your capital may be tied up in a plane that has not yet been delivered and is not a productive asset for you. We can take all that off people’s hands.”
US keeps driving market
Global Jet Capital uses a top-down linear regression model to forecast using industry and economic data. It sees the US continuing to dominate. The business jet financier expects North America to account for 73.9% of all pre-owned transactions in the next five years.
“North America is very strong. But we are seeing strength in India and Middle East and Asia Pacific getting better slowly,” says Kaushal. “There is a lot of growth in flight activity in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. We see Brazil as lacking in financing options for super-mid and large aircraft so we see opportunity there.”
Global Jet Capital forecasts that Latin America will be the second largest market accounting for 11.3% of all deals. Some 88% of Latin American deals are forecast to be for pre-owned aircraft (1,784 jets) compared with 237 new deliveries.
The finance company expects Europe to be the third busiest market accounting for 8.4% of deals. It forecasts that 557 of these will be new aircraft transactions with 927 pre-owned.
“This is an industry that has had its ups and downs as anyone who has participated in it knows. We are still being very careful in how we structure our transactions,” he says. “But at the same time, when we think about the environment that we’re in, we think that production levels will continue to grow, but moderately. The industry has been reshaped and that brings stability to the market.
“And the last thing I’ll say is just the expansion of the user base. The continuing trends in the growth of wealth, where both billionaire and centi-millionaire growth is in the mid to high single digits. You just have the foundation for an industry that can continue to stay on this trajectory.”
