The pre-owned large jet market is outpacing every other part of the business aviation resale market this year. According to JETNET’s JIQ Market Barometer, published October 5, 2026, large jets posted 825 pre-owned transactions over the twelve months through August, up 17.9% and the strongest growth of any cabin class. Across all business jets, transaction growth slowed to just 3.5%.
Amstat’s third-quarter 2026 data points the same way. As reported by AIN on October 12, resale values for heavy business jets increased markedly during the third quarter and held up more strongly than values for smaller models.
Here is what the latest numbers show.
Large Jets Are Outselling the Rest of the Market
JETNET’s data, on a trailing-twelve-month basis through August 2026:
- Large jets: 825 transactions, up 17.9%, the strongest cabin-class growth
- Small jets: 1,320 transactions, still the most actively traded class, but easing slightly
- All business jets: 2,823 transactions, up 3.5%
Large jet momentum also built over the summer. In JETNET’s previous edition, covering the twelve months through July, large jets had posted 812 transactions, up 13.7%. One month later, growth had climbed to 17.9%.
The broader market moved the other way. Pre-owned transaction growth across all business jets was running above 15% year over year in December 2025 and had cooled to roughly 3% by August. Full-year 2025 growth was 16.8%. JETNET points to the energy shock from earlier in 2026 as one factor that has weighed on near-term confidence.
Asking Prices Are Back to 2019 Levels
Average asking prices have settled after the run-up of the pandemic era. On a trailing-twelve-month basis through August:
- Large jets: $14.38 million
- Medium jets: $5.11 million
- Small jets: $3.53 million
JETNET notes that large jet asking prices led the pandemic-era surge and are now effectively back to 2019 levels.
Asking prices and resale values measure different things. Asking prices reflect the aircraft listed for sale, while resale values reflect what aircraft actually trade for. Amstat’s Q3 finding that heavy jet resale values rose markedly sits alongside JETNET’s data showing large jet asking prices back to their 2019 baseline.
Inventory Remains Tight
Supply is the main reason the pre-owned market remains seller-friendly. Even with transaction growth slowing, for-sale inventory has not rebuilt:
- 6.6% of the operational business jet fleet is listed for sale, down from 7.3% a year earlier and far below the 9% to 12% range of the previous decade.
- About 1,750 aircraft were for sale in a typical month, against 2,823 transactions over the same twelve months.
- The inventory-to-transaction ratio is about 0.62 to 1, compared with roughly 0.85 to 1 from 2013 through 2019.
Age Drives How Fast Aircraft Sell
The for-sale market is splitting into two tiers by age:
- Aircraft 16 years or older now make up 74% of for-sale inventory, up from 70% a year ago and 57% in 2015.
- The newest aircraft, 0 to 5 years old, make up just 6% of listings.
- Average days on market rose 3.0% to 96 days.
- Aircraft 0 to 5 years old sell in about 50 days, while every age band from 16 years and up averages more than 100 days.
Retirements remain low. Only 245 business jets were scrapped over the twelve months through August, around 1% of the fleet, even as a growing base of 1990s and 2000s aircraft approaches the end of its economic life.
The Demand Behind the Numbers
The broader business aviation market continues to support large jet demand:
- Flight activity: Global business jet departures reached 3.99 million over the twelve months through August, up 4.5%.
- Utilization: Aircraft are averaging 21.0 flight hours per month in 2026, 10.4% above 2019.
- Order books: The four major business jet manufacturers hold a combined backlog of $61.6 billion, a decade high. Gulfstream and Bombardier account for almost 75% of it, and Bombardier’s backlog is up 35.4% year over year.
- Wealth and profits: The global population of ultra-high-net-worth individuals reached a record of more than 684,000 in 2025, and U.S. corporate profits hit a record $4.3 trillion in Q2 2026.
Long factory backlogs matter for the pre-owned market. When new aircraft are sold out years in advance, buyers who want an aircraft sooner turn to the resale market, and that pressure is strongest in the large-cabin segment where the major backlogs sit.
What the Numbers Show
Through August 2026, the pre-owned large jet market combines the fastest transaction growth of any cabin class with tight inventory and strong factory backlogs behind it. Asking prices have returned to 2019 levels, while Amstat’s third-quarter data shows heavy jet resale values rising. The broader market has cooled from its late-2025 pace, but large jets are moving against that trend.
Contact Holstein Aviation for a current read on the market for your aircraft, or to see the large jets available now.
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