Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF 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 the airplane 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, [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF The Challenger 3500 is routinely presented as proof that the business aircraft market is on fire. There are waiting lists. There are no aircraft publicly available. Buyers are supposedly willing to pay premiums. And brokers frequently cite the model as evidence of an exceptionally strong super-midsize market. There is just one problem: The Challenger 3500 has only completed one known owner-to-owner resale in the history [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Aviation professionals scrutinize maintenance invoices, fuel bills, appraisals, and aircraft operating costs down to the last dollar. But how closely do they examine the organizations collecting their membership dues? In this episode of The Truth About the Market, Jason goes somewhere most aviation media will not go on the record. He opens the public IRS filings of the industry’s largest alphabet organizations and asks [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Most aircraft buyers ask the same question: What is this airplane worth today? Almost nobody asks the question that may matter more: What will it be worth when I’m ready to get out? 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 [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the MarketHost: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREFMore than 700,000 people.More than 10,000 aircraft.One small city in Wisconsin.For one week, Wittman Regional becomes the busiest airport in the world.Most people call Oshkosh an air show.Jason calls it something else:the largest aircraft transaction event on the planet that nobody calls a transaction event.Deals get discussed in campgrounds.Deals get started in vendor hangars.Deals happen standing in line for a bratwurst.And far too many of them are [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Right now, somewhere in America, a broker is listing an aircraft that will sell before the ad finishes uploading. Across town, another broker is cutting the price for the third time on the same model year. So is the market up? Or is the market down? Jason says that is the wrong question. The right question is: Which market? In this episode of The [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF For the first time in roughly 60 years, aircraft owners can buy a genuinely new piston aircraft engine. Not a rebuild. Not a refreshed version of an old design. Not a derivative of something from the Eisenhower era. A clean-sheet engine. It burns Jet A. It has no spark plugs. No magnetos. No mixture to lean. No carburetor to ice up. By almost every [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF Bitcoin is melting down. That is the headline everywhere. Screens are red. Crypto traders are panicking. Everyone is suddenly calling it a crash. But Jason opens this episode with a simple point: Meltdown depends entirely on your time frame. By the time everyone feels the crash, most of the damage has usually already happened. And that same pattern is playing out in the aircraft [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF 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 [...]

Podcast: The Truth About the Market Host: Jason Zilberbrand, President of VREF True story: A man calls Jason after buying an airplane. He is thrilled. He thinks he got a great deal. The broker told him the market was hot. The airplane was going to disappear. Another buyer was supposedly circling. He had to move fast. So he did. Then Jason asks him three questions. And after the third question, there is silence. The kind of [...]