Next week the business aviation industry descends on Las Vegas for NBAA-BACE 2026, and it arrives in reasonable health. Manufacturers handed over more jets in the first half of the year than a year earlier, the pre-owned market is short of aircraft to sell, and flying is still edging upwards. The business jet market in 2026 is not booming, but it is busy, and the shape of its demand has changed. The biggest buyers are no longer individual owners or corporate flight departments. They are the fractional operators, and their order books now set the pace for much of the industry.

What to expect at NBAA-BACE 2026

The convention runs from 20 to 22 October, with the exhibition in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the static display of aircraft out at Henderson Executive Airport. According to AIN, most of the large manufacturers have committed to the show, including Gulfstream, Bombardier, Dassault, Textron Aviation, Pilatus, Honda Aircraft, Daher and Boeing Business Jets. Two notable names are sitting it out: Embraer and Airbus Corporate Jets.

The organisers have also added a Horizon Stage for headline speakers on the show floor. Among those confirmed are Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, this year's recipient of NBAA's Meritorious Service to Aviation Award, and Ross Perot Jr. For buyers, the static display remains the main attraction: it is one of the few places where most of the current product range can be walked through in a single afternoon.

Deliveries are up, and forecasters are cautiously optimistic

The most recent hard numbers come from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. As AVweb reported, business jet shipments rose 8.2% to 383 aircraft in the first six months of 2026. Gulfstream delivered 79, Embraer 74 and Bombardier 56. Across all general aviation, billings climbed 15.5% to $14.3bn, a gap that shows how much of the value now sits in larger, more expensive turbine aircraft.

Forecast International has spent the past few weeks publishing a two-part outlook covering six manufacturers: Bombardier, Gulfstream, Textron, Embraer, Dassault and Pilatus. In part one, it put the group's 2025 deliveries at 728 aircraft and pointed to strong order books in the first quarter of this year:

  • Bombardier's backlog was up 43% on a year earlier.
  • Gulfstream's grew 17%.
  • Textron's rose just 1%, while Embraer's was roughly flat.
  • Dassault was expected to deliver around 40 Falcons in 2026, up from 37.

Part two sets a more conservative baseline. Taking the 317 jets these six makers delivered in the first half, and assuming the first half again accounts for 42% of the year as it did in 2025, it arrives at 751 deliveries for 2026. From there it sees a steady climb to 776 in 2027, 801 in 2028 and 819 in 2029, before a dip to 741 in 2030. That last figure blends a no-recession case of 835 with a downturn case of 566, weighting the chance of a correction at 35%.

For perspective, those numbers remain far below the 2008 peak of 1,317 deliveries, but comfortably above the 684 of 2019 and the pandemic low of 533 in 2020.

Fractional ownership is now the engine

The striking theme in Forecast International's analysis is who is doing the buying. Fractional and programme operators, it argues, now dominate forward demand. It counts more than 400 potential sales of Embraer's Praetor jets tied to NetJets and Flexjet, and nearly 300 Bombardier orders from NetJets, Bond and Vista Global.

The flight data tells the same story. In the week to 4 October, WingX figures published by Private Jet Card Comparisons showed 79,710 private jet departures worldwide, about 3% more than a year earlier. The United States did most of the work, with 55,465 flights, up 4%. Fractional and charter flying in North America rose 7%, while in Europe it was flat. WingX analyst Nick Koscinski noted that fractional operators "are still the ones driving it", adding that charter had been soft for two weeks running.

Wealthy flyers increasingly want guaranteed access to a jet without running one themselves.

That preference explains the orders. A fractional share offers a fixed slice of an aircraft, managed and crewed by the operator, with access to the wider fleet. For manufacturers, a single operator signing for hundreds of airframes brings years of production visibility.

The risk in so few big customers

Concentration cuts both ways. Forecast International points to Wheels Up, whose fleet-disposal strategy in 2024 and 2025 released more than 70 used Textron jets onto the secondary market as the company retrenched. That moved pre-owned prices and clouded order visibility. When one large operator's business model falters, the whole market feels it.

For now the opposite problem prevails. Citing AMSTAT data, the forecaster says 6.5% of the active business jet fleet was listed for sale in June 2026, below the ten-year average of 8.1% and the lowest level since August 2023. That favours sellers, particularly of heavy jets, although values for light jets have softened modestly.

Regional demand is uneven, too. WingX recorded Middle East departures 12% lower year on year in early October and Asia down 4%, while Africa, from a small base, was up 27%. Koscinski described Gulf activity as recovering but still around a fifth below last year.

What to watch

  • Announcements in Las Vegas. NBAA-BACE is a traditional moment for fleet orders and new models. Watch whether fractional operators add to already large commitments.
  • Charter versus fractional. If charter softness persists while fractional flying grows, the shift in how wealthy flyers buy access will become harder to ignore.
  • Pre-owned supply. Tight inventory supports values today, but a large operator thinning its fleet could change that quickly, as the Wheels Up episode showed.
  • The full-year tally. The gap between Forecast International's 751 baseline and earlier, higher estimates will close when manufacturers report their year-end deliveries.

The takeaway is that this is a market supported less by first-time owners than by a handful of operators selling shares and flight hours to them. That has made the industry steadier, and more dependent on a few very large customers.

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