NBAA ran the session on 10 September 2026. Jay Mesinger of Mesinger Jet Sales chaired it. He said buyers are still in the market even with higher fuel costs and a lot of noise around the economy. Rolland Vincent of Rolland Vincent Associates put numbers on the supply side. Firm order backlogs in the first half of 2026 were 13% higher than a year earlier, he said, while new-aircraft deliveries in the figures he cited rose 5%.

Those two rates do not match, and they are not meant to. Backlogs growing faster than deliveries is the point. Vincent also said labour, the cost of adding plant, and the way jets are still built by hand all slow any attempt to close the gap.

GAMA published its own first-half count on 3 September. Worldwide business jet shipments rose 8.2% to 383 aircraft in the first six months of 2026, from 354 a year earlier. Airplane billings reached USD 14.3 billion, up 15.5%. That is more units than Vincent's 5% delivery figure. Treat them as separate series. Both still show output rising, and both still show the queue growing faster than the factory floor.

The shortage is in jets under five years old. JETNET's August 2026 market barometer, using data through July, put for-sale inventory at 6.6% of the operational fleet. That is below the 9% to 12% band it recorded for much of the prior decade. Aircraft aged five years or less were 6% of listings. Those young jets still sell in about 53 days. Combined OEM backlog across the four major manufacturers sat at USD 61.6 billion. Gulfstream and Bombardier held almost 75% of that total.

Keith Hayes is senior vice president and national sales manager at PNC Aviation Finance. He told the webinar the split is now obvious. Smaller, older airframes are depreciating in the usual way. Larger, newer airframes are not. "Buyers can find that their new aircraft is worth more than they paid for," he said.

Banks still want those late-model, large-cabin loans. Older aircraft can still be financed, Hayes said, but the terms get tighter. His warning was about the next trade, not about getting a term sheet today. If an owner sets the loan on today's price, and values ease before the aircraft is sold, the debt can sit above what the next buyer will pay. That blocks the step into the replacement jet.

Taylor St. Germain of ITR Economics told the same call that real GDP growth is expected to run for about three years, with a correction around 2030. He also said the expansion will be expensive, with inflation and high rates still in the mix. He did not give a rate, a GDP print, or a date more precise than that. Leave it there.

For an operator the practical result is cover. If the preferred type is two years out at the factory, and almost none of the five-year-old stock is listed, the gap has to be filled with someone else's aircraft. Goodall Aviation arranges ACMI and wet lease capacity for that gap. The contact page is the place to start.

Sources: nbaa.org, gama.aero, jetnet.com