Is It Time To Buy?

One of the best ways to gauge if now is the right time to purchase an aircraft is to know what your goals are. The PJC primarily works with high-volume, long-range travelers. After seeing tens or hundreds of flight hours rack up per year, it is very common to have the thought of acquiring your own aircraft. We run analysis to look at this from three different angles to help guide our clients: 

• Your annual travel budget.
• Your typical mission and flight profile. 
• Your financial advisor or family office’s appetite for sales / use tax exemptions.

There is no perfect scenario to make charter or ownership a one-stop-shop and have it be the best scenario. That is why a blended approach of considering a year’s worth of business and/or personal travel and reverse engineering a combination of services may actually be the best solution. Our goal is to align with your needs, whether we can support them or suggest a service and/or ownership model that best aligns your answers to the three points of consideration mentioned above. The increased demand in ownership, coupled with a stagnant inventory due to COVID limiting manufacturing, has shifted aircraft transactions to a seller’s market. This has made many of our conversations with prospective owners realize that the acquisition value does not pencil against the opportunity cost for the airplanes that are currently available. The supporting operational cost of ownership has also increased in cost, due to higher wages and rates for crew members, fuel cost, labor and parts.

On the other side, there are some optimal charter and fractional solutions re-entering the market that we have been pairing our clients with, to gain the highest value out of each flight. Allow us to do the due diligence work in reviewing your travel profile and helping form the most cost-effective, strategic approach available in today’s environment. We look forward to speaking with you and providing our analysis to help you better understand what approach to private travel supports your personal and financial priorities.