VREF | The Truth About the Aviation Market

The biggest business aviation convention of the year featured billions of dollars in real airplanes. But the display that set the internet on fire? A $14 million jet that doesn't fly yet—with visible supports beneath its mockup wings. On October 19, 2026, SyberJet unveiled the proposed SJ36 in Las Vegas, promising the kind of performance that could rewrite the light-jet playbook: Mach 0.88, more t...

The Truth About the Aviation Market: Halloween Special It's late. The ramp lights buzz. In a hangar you've never visited sits the airplane you've been watching online for eleven months. Same photos. Same tail number. Another price reduction. The listing has been alive so long, it has a birthday. Behind it, somebody's adding mysterious charges to an invoice. Somewhere else, a contract is quietly dr...

What if your airplane lost value overnight—even though nothing happened to it? Same engine. Same hours. Same maintenance history. Not a single thing changed in your hangar. But something changed hundreds of miles away, in Mobile, Alabama. Continental Aerospace Technologies has a new owner. If you fly a Bonanza, Cessna 210, Cirrus, Baron, Seneca, Mooney, or another Continental-powered airplane, thi...

To sell a house in Illinois, you need a license. To broker a used yacht in Florida, you need a license, fingerprints, a background check, and a bond. To sell a $35 million business jet in the United States? “You need a phone.” In the last 12 months, VREF tracked roughly 4,000 retail business jet and turboprop sales. More than 500 companies appeared as brokers or dealers. About half showed up on ju...

A listener went shopping for a mid-’90s Piper Archer. Low time. No damage history. Original paint. Original panel. Engine close to TBO. The seller was asking $189,000 . VREF put the airplane at roughly $165,000 . The buyer was prepared to offer $175,000 cash —and says he would have gone to $180,000. He never got the chance. According to the listener, the broker dismissed the VREF number and said t...

For more than four decades, one story helped define the legacy Citation market: This is the jet you can fly yourself. Your first jet. Your hands on the throttles. Your family in the back. Nobody required in the right seat. At the end of September 2026, that story changed. The FAA ended the single-pilot exemptions that allowed qualifying pilots to operate a group of Part 25-certified legacy Citatio...

A parent takes out a home-equity line. A student wires tens of thousands of dollars to a flight school. The school has experienced instructors, airline partnerships, manufacturer affiliations, national press coverage, and every outward sign of credibility. Then the school closes. And the money is gone. In this episode we look at the financial structure behind prepaid flight training—and why studen...

Last episode, Jason explained why nobody should wire eight figures directly to an aircraft seller without escrow. This episode asks the uncomfortable follow-up: Why will some of those same sophisticated buyers wire $250,000, $500,000, even $1 million directly to a jet-card company with no escrow, no collateral, no public financial statements, and no guarantee the money is still sitting there when...

Somewhere today, someone may wire $40 million to an aircraft escrow company they’ve never visited, run by people they’ve never met—and barely think twice about it. Why? Because aviation runs on trust. More specifically, it runs on a small group of title and escrow firms, many clustered around the FAA Aircraft Registry in Oklahoma City, that move enormous sums of money and coordinate the paperwork...

An owner has been paying into an engine program for 11 years . More than $1 million contributed . The airplane is worth roughly $3 million. And the overhaul those payments are supposed to protect him from is still four to five years away. So he asks: “At this point, am I buying protection—or am I funding somebody else’s overhaul?” In this episode: • Why engine-program enrollment should be analyzed...

The September 1 VREF value revision is live—and the numbers tell a very different story than the broad “strong market” or “weak market” headlines. Business jet transaction volume is down nearly 19% year to date , essentially returning to 2020 COVID-era levels. But prices didn’t simply fall with volume. They split. Across 658 business jet model years revised by VREF: 421 moved down. 230 moved up. 7...

Jason Zilberbrand found something unusual on an ordinary corporate website: Luscombe Mooney Aircraft Company. Two historic general aviation brands. One masthead. Mooney’s address. Mooney’s phone number. Mooney’s domain. But no major announcement explaining how the two names came together. So Jason went looking for the paper trail. In Episode 54 of The Truth About the Aviation Market , he reconstru...

How does an entire market start pricing assets at numbers buyers have never actually paid? That’s the question behind Episode 53 of The Truth About the Market . And although Jason starts with Ferrari, this episode is really about airplanes. Because aviation has all the ingredients required to create the same phenomenon: thin transaction data, private closings, patient sellers, emotional ownership,...

An $8 million Citation CJ4 is sitting on a ramp. The owner isn’t flying it. He isn’t even in the country. A line guy hooks up a tug, gets distracted, and tows it into a hangar improperly. Forty seconds later, the damage is done. The aircraft is repaired correctly, returned to service, and made completely airworthy. But when it comes out the other side, it’s worth nearly $2 million less than it was...

In this episode, we cover: • Why the Challenger 3500 has become the industry’s favorite proof that the super-midsize market is running hot • What Jason found after reviewing every recorded Challenger 3500 transfer • How many Challenger 3500s have been built • How many are currently in operation • How many are still awaiting delivery • Why none of the aircraft currently carry a public asking price...

In this episode, we cover: • What public IRS Form 990 filings reveal about executive compensation • The reported compensation of the National Business Aviation Association’s president and CEO • How additional compensation can appear separately from base compensation • Why a reported multimillion-dollar salary matters in a year when the organization recorded a multimillion-dollar deficit • How exec...

In this mailbag episode of The Truth About the Market , Jason answers a question from Paul Bordeaux, Chief Pilot at Hargrove Engineers and Constructors: How should a buyer evaluate future demand for an out-of-production business jet? In this episode, we cover: • The most important question buyers almost never ask before purchasing a used business jet • Why today’s aircraft value tells you very lit...

In this episode, we cover: • Why Oshkosh is the largest aircraft transaction event nobody calls a transaction event • How more than 700,000 people and 10,000 aircraft turn AirVenture into a live market signal • Why deals at Oshkosh often begin in campgrounds, vendor booths, flight lines, and casual conversations • Why EAA is not just an air show, but one of the engines that keeps general aviation...

In this episode, we cover: • Why “the aircraft market” is never just one market • Why the better question is not whether the market is up or down, but which market you are talking about • Why some aircraft still sell in days, even during broader slowdowns • Why aviation markets move on their own cycles, driven by their own buyers and missions • Why the PA-46 family remains one of the most resilien...

In this episode: • Why the DeltaHawk engine is one of the most significant piston-engine developments in decades • Why a clean-sheet aircraft engine matters in an industry built around very old designs • What makes the DeltaHawk different from traditional piston engines • Why Jet A capability matters in a world moving away from leaded aviation fuel • How the engine’s diesel design, single power le...

In this episode, we cover: • Why Bitcoin’s selloff is a useful comparison for what is happening in aviation • Why “meltdown” always depends on the time frame you are using • How market damage often happens long before the public starts panicking • Why aviation is showing the same behavioral pattern as other asset cycles • Why participation dries up before prices visibly break • How sentiment crack...

Everybody hates a down market. Sellers hate it. Brokers hate it. The guy who bought at the top really hates it. But here is what nobody wants to say out loud: A down market may be the best buying environment you will ever see. The problem is most buyers sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to feel safe again. And by the time it feels safe, the deal is gone. In this episode: • Why a down mar...

Not every aviation mistake happens in the cockpit. Some happen in the purchase agreement. Some happen in the asking price. Some happen at tax time. Some happen when smart people trust market sentiment instead of market data. In this episode, Jason walks through three real-world aircraft transaction stories, with names and details redacted, showing how successful people lose real money by mistaking...

In this episode of The Truth About the Market , Jason walks through a real legal case in which he served as an expert witness. Certain names and details have been omitted or redacted for privacy, but the facts are drawn from court filings, testimony, and the underlying transaction itself... which became years of litigation involving ownership rights, sale proceeds, contract interpretation, and the...

In this episode of The Truth About the Market , Jason responds to a new claim making the rounds in aviation: that legacy aircraft valuation methods are “broken math,” and that AI-powered valuation tools have supposedly discovered a better way to price aircraft. In this episode, we cover: • Why “free” aircraft valuations should always raise one immediate question • Why asking prices are not the sam...