Aero Asset Report Connotes Economic Hardship

Aero Asset—a Toronto-based helicopter trading firm and publisher of market reports pertaining to pre-owned, twin and single-engine helicopters—has released its 2022 Half-Year Heli Market Trends report. Regrettably, the news—in keeping with the grim, axiomatic truths of global economic crisis and worsening Western recession—is worrying.

Retail sales of pre-owned twin-engine helicopters dropped to 73-units in the first six months of 2022, down 17% compared to the same period in 2021. Despite fewer transactions, dollar volume—owing primarily to diminished aircraft stock and currency devaluation—jumped 12% to $264-million. Compared to the corresponding time-period in 2021, the number of pre-owned helicopters offered for sale during the first half of 2022 dropped by thirty-percent.

Aero Asset vice president of market research Valerie Pereira stated: “The absorption rate improved slightly, to 12-months year-over-year, and remained stable compared to the previous semester. The number of deals pending at various stages of transaction increased twenty-percent in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the second quarter of 2021.”

Excepting heavy helicopters, the retail sales of which increased over the time-period, supply for sale continued to decrease across all helicopter classes through 2022. Light and medium twin-engine retail sales volume decreased nearly twenty-percent year-over-year.

The best performing pre-owned twin-engine model in the first half of 2022 was Airbus Helicopters’ EC/H145, followed by the Leonardo’s AW139, and Airbus Helicopters’ EC/H135. Two twin engine models—Sikorsky’s S-76D and AgustaWestland’s AW169—saw no pre-owned retail sales over the first six months of 2022.

Aero Assets reports that North American and European pre-owned helicopter sales accounted for 75% of total transactions in the first two quarters of 2022. Europe was the only region in which a positive trend in transaction volume was observed. Year-over-year sales of VIP and utility helicopters decreased by 25% while sales of EMS configured twin-engine helicopters increased over the same period.

FMI: www.aeroasset.com