Used Aircraft Market Predictions -2026: Six Months Later

Back in February, I laid out a thesis on this blog: the used aircraft market was showing every outward sign of a price correction — exposure times lengthening, some deals falling apart — yet prices weren’t actually falling. I chalked it up to a straightforward supply squeeze. Buyers priced out of new-aircraft backlogs were shopping used, and reduced insurance and parts costs on older iron were keeping more of the existing fleet viable and in demand.

Six months on, with a fresh round of industry data in hand, it’s worth checking that thesis against reality instead of just assuming it aged well, though I had confidence I was judging the market correctly.

The backlog got bigger, not smaller

If the squeeze thesis holds, we’d expect the pressure pushing buyers toward the used market to still be there — or worse. It is. FLYING’s May 2026 general aviation market survey put the industry’s combined order backlog north of $60 billion, with most manufacturers reporting higher unit sales and billings in 2025 despite the tariff disruptions that rattled deliveries that year. On its face, that’s exactly the kind of ongoing new-aircraft bottleneck that keeps buyers looking at the secondary market.

But the headline number hides a piston-segment problem

GAMA released its 2025 Aircraft Shipment and Billing Report on February 18, and the headline was a record: $35.7 billion in total industry billings, up 14.6% year over year, with airplane billings alone climbing 16.1% to $31.0 billion. Impressive on its face.

But break out the piston segment, the one that actually matters for most of my readers and most of what RVS appraises here in Alaska, and the picture looks different. Piston airplane shipments rose by all of 10 units in 2025, to 1,782. That’s roughly half a percent unit growth. That’s well within the margin of error. The dollar-value record was driven almost entirely by business jets, where unit shipments climbed 11.8% to 854 aircraft, and by piston/jet billings mix shifting upward in average price. Turboprops actually declined 5.1% in units, down to 594 — worth flagging directly for Alaska’s turboprop and bush-charter operators, since that’s a segment a lot of you fly and finance.

I raised the specter of the mid-1980s GA slump in my outline notes for this piece, where billings climbed while unit sales quietly fell apart underneath the headline. That pattern doesn’t map cleanly onto 2025’s numbers — piston units didn’t fall, they just barely moved. A record year in dollars is not the same claim as a record year in piston units, and it’s the piston segment, not the jet segment, that determines what a Cub or a 182 is actually worth to the person trying to buy one in Alaska this year.

What that flat piston line actually means for buyers

A nearly flat piston shipment number, combined with a still-growing backlog and continued demand, is consistent with what I predicted in February: the used market isn’t being flooded with fresh competition from new piston production. If you’re shopping used right now, that scarcity dynamic hasn’t eased. In Alaska, there’s an additional dynamic… damaged aircraft from the winter windstorms. But that’s another topic for another blog post.

Current pricing backs the pricing stagnation indicators. FLYING Finance’s July 2026 buyer’s guide puts a clean 1970s Cessna 172 N or P model at $140,000 to $175,000, with lenders offering up to 80% LTV on 172s specifically because resale liquidity is treated as close to guaranteed. A Cherokee 180, by comparison, typically runs 15% to 20% below a comparable 172 — not because it’s a lesser airplane (but let’s be honest, in Alaska… it is), but because it doesn’t have the same flight-school-driven liquidity behind it. That’s a useful real-world illustration of how thin the piston new-production pipeline is translating directly into firm, differentiated used pricing by model.

Why older aircraft are staying in the fleet

Part of the mechanism behind this is structural, not just cyclical. Technavio’s March 2026 used aircraft market analysis notes that new-production delivery times now extend beyond 24 months for some popular models — which is the concrete number behind “buyers can’t wait, so they buy used” as an actual industry dynamic rather than a hunch. The same analysis notes that refurbishment investment (updated cabin tech, connectivity, and the like) can add up to 15% to an aircraft’s resale value, and that using serviceable used parts in maintenance can cut operating costs by as much as 25% compared to new parts. Both of those reinforce the economics that make an older, well-maintained airframe a rational buy right now instead of a compromise.

Where this leaves the squeeze thesis

Six months in, the core mechanism I described in February still checks out: constrained new production, a still-growing backlog, and real cost advantages to buying and maintaining used are keeping pressure on a shrinking pool of quality used piston aircraft. The mid-1980s caution is worth keeping in the back of your mind as an industry-wide billings story, but it isn’t showing up yet in piston unit volume, which is the number that actually drives what your airplane is worth.

If you’re holding a well-documented, well-maintained piston aircraft in Alaska right now, nothing in this data says you should expect a correction on your end of the market anytime soon. If you’re buying, expect the same tight, competitive conditions I described in February — just don’t expect them to loosen up because of anything happening in the jet backlog. Corrections are coming, just not yet.

Sources: GAMA 2025 Aircraft Shipment and Billing Report (Feb. 18, 2026); FLYING’s General Aviation Rides Momentum Into 2026 (May 2026); FLYING Finance 2026 Aircraft Buyer’s Guide (July 2026); Technavio Used Aircraft Market Growth Analysis (March 2026).