![]() ![]() “Honeywell does not launch an upgrade for certain business aircraft unless it is assured of capturing at least 10 percent of the fleet,” said Ken Snodgrass, vice president of marketing and product management for Honeywell Aerospace. Development of a system includes a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC), which is a significant investment for the OEM or completion house, and a portion of that investment is likely to be passed on to the customer. The more customers there are for a particular cockpit upgrade, the lower the price, generally speaking, according to manufacturers. The price of the upgrade, plus installation, is often linked to whether there is a significant market for the system. Wilson said he expects hull values to continue to drop near-term with some recovery seen in 2015. In its latest business aviation outlook issued last fall, Honeywell said the used-jet environment is showing “modest improvement, but remains challenging in the near-term.” Values of business jets have seen double-digit drops in recent years. The problem comes three years later when the aircraft’s value drops to $5.5 million and the percentage of the upgrade versus the hull value has bumped up to 20 percent to 25 percent, Wilson added. For example, if your target market is a Falcon 2000, valued at $7.5 million, and you want to upgrade the cockpit with a $750,000 Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21. “Once an aircraft gets beyond 20 years, we find that the operator will fly the aircraft and not upgrade it.”īrian Wilson, director of avionics at Banyan Air Service, offers this general rule of thumb: “The upgrade should not exceed 10 percent to 15 percent of hull value.”īut, in recent years, as the values of used business jets have dropped, this has become a more complicated equation. ![]() “We’ve found that business aircraft between 10 to 20 years old have the greatest propensity to upgrade,” said John Peterson, director of avionics marketing for Rockwell Collins. The business jet market appears to be stabilizing, prompting operators to again make the business case for upgrading the cockpits. “No one wants to part with hard cash unless they have a firm belief that the economy won’t get worse.”īut with the recent highs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which haven’t been seen in four years, coupled with a reduction in market volatility, “we believe that those who were thinking about an avionics upgrade will finally get off the fence,” Foley said. “Confidence has been the element that has been lacking since 2008,” said Brian Foley, Brian Foley Associates, a general/business aviation management advisory company. For the cockpit, however, making the business case and seeing that return on investment is a bit more of a challenge, particularly in a tepid market. And often the upgrades can be done at a lower price point, and incrementally. The cabin upgrades can increase productivity, allowing business aircraft operators to stay connected. Cockpit upgrades are a bit of a tougher sell than cabin upgrades, for example. ![]()
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