Asian Sky Quarterly 2023 Q4

EDITOR’S NOTE
Balance, as any tightrope
walker will tell you, is good.
We use balance all of the
time, from a balanced diet to
ensure that we aren’t eating
too unhealthily, to a work-life
balance that ensures we get
enough quality time away from
the office.
It is also good in the pre-owned private jet market, as it means
that those that want to acquire an aircraft should be able to do so
at a fair cost, whilst those selling should be able to get reasonable
value during the sale. It also generally means that there is a
reasonable number of aircraft available in the market, not too
many, not too few, just the right amount.
believe that the market balanced, we are likely to see new people
coming into business aviation, and renewed interest from those
that we put off by high prices and low demand that we saw over
the past few years. And that’s a good thing for all of us.
Of course, it’s not balanced across all models, but you’ll have to
study the pages of this Quarterly yourself to find out which ones
are, and which ones aren’t.
But the fact that almost 50% of respondents now feel like we are
in a balanced market is highly encouraging. In fact, it increased
by a whopping 15% when compared to the previous quarter, with
those feeling that we were in a sellers’ market declining by an
even more whopping 23%. In fairness this percentage has been
bouncing up and down over the past few quarters, much like a
tightrope walker that has lost their balance.
Having gone through the Covid years and seeing the market
favor sellers, it looks like we are now entering a new phase, one
that doesn’t favor sellers nor buyers. What this means is that we
can start using a different term, one that is very rarely used in
business aviation, and that term is ‘value’.
Value of course is relative, and whilst to you and I it might seem
alien to say that spending millions on a private jet is paying
good value, prices of aircraft have come down from those Covid
year highs we saw. Whether you call it stabilization or call it
normalization doesn’t really matter, what matters is that if people
In this Quarterly we have two Japanese features – the first on
MRO Japan, which made its first foray into the world of corporate
aviation when it won a maintenance contract for an EU registered
Airbus ACJ318. The second is on a new FBO in Sapporo, Japan.
Sapporo has been crying out for an FBO for many years, so we
spoke with the airport authorities and Universal Aviation – which
is managing the FBO – about the significance of its opening and
the services that it offers.
Elsewhere in this issue, and alongside the usual data and intel
that you have come to rely on, our own Consultancy Services
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS AND SPONSORS
II | ASIAN SKY QUARTERLY - FOURTH QUARTER 2023