Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF The SJ30's 40-Year History, Trevor Milton's Comeback, and the Residual-Value Question Behind Aviation's Most Controversial New Jet Billions of dollars in aircraft. Hundreds of announcements. The biggest business aviation convention of the year. And one of the most talked-about airplanes in Las Vegas wasn't an airplane at all. It was a mockup. On October 19, 2026, the night before NBAA-BACE opened, SyberJet Aircraft unveiled [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF A Halloween Special: Five Monsters Haunting the Aircraft Market... and How to Protect Yourself It's late. The ramp lights are buzzing. You walk into a hangar you've never visited before. And there it is. Under a single flickering light sits the airplane you've been watching online for eleven months. Same tail number. Same photographs. Same optimistic description. Another price reduction. It's been listed so [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Continental's $535 Million Sale, the Hidden Cost of Engine Time, and the Truth About Selling Without a Broker A Bonanza owner wakes up tomorrow, walks into the hangar, and finds the same airplane that was there yesterday. Same engine. Same hours. Same maintenance history. Not a single thing has changed. But suppose the price of a factory engine overhaul increases by 10%. What happens [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Should Business Aviation Finally Regulate the People in the Middle? To broker the sale of a house in Illinois, a real estate license is required. To broker a used yacht in Florida, the requirements include licensing, fingerprints, a background check, and a bond. To sell a $35 million business jet in the United States? You need a phone. Over the past 12 months, VREF [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Why Correctly Priced Aircraft Sell—and Overpriced Airplanes Sit A listener went shopping for a mid-’90s Piper Archer. Low time. No damage history. Original paint. Original panel. Engine approaching TBO, but overall a nice airplane. The seller was asking $189,000, down from an original $199,000. VREF put the airplane at roughly $165,000. The buyer was prepared to offer $175,000 cash—and says he would have gone [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF 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. That story changed at the end of September 2026. According to the FAA action discussed in this episode, the agency ended the single-pilot exemptions [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF What Happens to Your Money When a Flight School Fails? A parent takes out a home-equity line. A 19-year-old starts chasing a lifelong dream. A lender wires tens of thousands of dollars to a flight school. The school has experienced instructors, manufacturer affiliations, airline partnerships, national press coverage—and every outward sign that the family did its homework. Then the doors close. And the money [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF What Really Happens to Your Money When You Buy a Jet Card Last episode was about escrow. Why no rational aircraft buyer wires eight figures directly to a seller. Why a neutral third party holds the money. Why structure matters more than trust. Then Jason asks an uncomfortable question: Why will many of those same sophisticated buyers wire $250,000, $500,000, even $1 million directly [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Somewhere today, someone may wire $40 million to an aircraft escrow company in Oklahoma City they’ve never visited, run by people they’ve never met, in an industry with no dedicated federal regulator and no government guarantee behind the account. And they’ll probably sleep just fine. That same person may spend 20 minutes disputing a $90 credit-card charge. Why? Because aviation has built an extraordinary [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF An aircraft owner has been paying into an engine program for 11 years. Every invoice paid. More than $1 million contributed. The entire airplane is now 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 Jason Zilberbrand a deceptively simple question: “At this point, am I buying protection—or [...]