Plus a Praetor 600 market Update

Welcome back to Bizjet Buzz, you’re pathway to jet market enlightenment.

In this issue:

Note: The Market Stats Infographic is updated every month and lags one month for the data to catch up.

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It used to be cool to observe the world around us with our eyes. Then we realised the human eye isn’t that great. Any thinner than a hair and we struggle to see it.

Until we discovered the lens…

Galileo took things to the next level when he started stacking them. He created microscopes that could see bacteria and telescopes that could see the man on the moon.

Then we went even further and discovered how to capture light. Light is focused through a lens onto a digital sensor, turned into a digital signal and sent wherever we want. At the other end it’s decoded and turned back into an image.

That’s what we see on our screens.

Some of us are obsessed with experiencing everything through the lens. Screens are part of every day life, so much so that we can’t go an hour without seeing one, even if we try.

Screens in airplanes is not new, but they’ve broken out of the ‘glass cockpit’ (a term used to describe modern digital navigation instrumentation with output on screens) and into the cabin… in a big way.

Otto’s Phantom 3500 concept completely ditches cabin windows and replaces them with massive screens along both sidewalls. Who would want to use the old fashioned eyeball and look out a window anyway, right? Life through the lens!

But Embraer have beaten Otto to it.

Otto’s Phantom 3500 is still in development. The Praetor 600E however, is a real thing and I got to see one last week, for the first time, with my own eyes! 🛩️👀

Embraer have done something very smart in the new Praetor models, the 600E and smaller sister 500E.

There’s nowhere to mount a large screen in a midsize jet…so we thought. The bulkheads (walls on either end of the cabin) are small and the sidewalls are curved.

But if you curve a 42-inch screen you can hang it on the sidewall and not lose any space. So that’s what they did.

They’ve also installed cameras on the outside so you can view the clouds while you fly, just like you’re looking out the window.

The Smart Window is opposite the divan, so the back section of the cabin becomes a cinema complete with surround sound. Or use it for a video conference.

Very smart indeed. I have room in my life for one more screen.

Check out the video of the 600E I took last week.

Fractional programs love the Praetor 600, but they love the slightly smaller sister, the 500, even more.

Here’s the breakdown of the Praetor 500 and 600 fleet. 59% of the 500s are on fractional, whereas only 17% of the 600s are.

Flexjet was the fleet launch customer for the Praetor 600 (before the 600E) back in 2019 and took delivery of the first Praetor 600E this year, September 2026. There’ll be approx. 10 P600Es with Flexjet by the end of the year.

With the Praetor 600 already 7 years in operation, the pre-owned market is active. We’ve seen 25 pre-owned Praetor 600 deals in the last 24 months.

With such high demand in the super-mid category this year, it was a little surprising to see that inventory got up to 12 units during the summer. (see below)

This did not happen in the Bombardier Challenger 3500 market, a very close competitor of the Praetor 600.

In saying that, we’re now back down to 7 for sale and 4 of these are deal pending.

If you want a Praetor 600 right now you’ve 3 options with ask price ranging from $23-27m for 2020 to 2023 models respectively.

Residual values have been very strong in this market. In fact, if you bought a Praetor 600 in 2019 you could sell it now for low $20s, what you paid, if not a little more. It has appreciated!

Put an order for P600E today and you’ll be three years older and almost $30mil poorer by the time you take delivery. Delivery positions/2026 models are trading in the low $30Ms. That’s a couple of million dollars more than the owner would have paid.

It’s the market dynamics. There’s just not enough to go around and with wait times of three years for new, buyers are paying instant gratification premiums.

If you’re flying one of these super-mid jets 300hrs/year, this is what you need to budget.

Are we in a Buyer market or a Seller market?

Which side do current jet market conditions favour?