Business aviation’s chances of a soft landing after the boom of the past two years stand at 40%, according to Ford Von Weise.

The global head aircraft finance, Citi Private Bank, gave delegates at yesterday’s CJI Town Hall three scenarios for the industry post-boom: “[Scenario] one, a robust future, what we might call as business as usual today. The second is a resilient future, what we might call soft landing, and then thirdly is recession, which in our industry, is a hard landing,”

With a resilient future, or soft landing, at 40%, Von Weise forecasted the likelihood of the other scenarios at robust future 25%, recession, or hard landing 25% and room for error at 10%.

Citi Private Bank predict a soft-landing despite the current process of quantitative tightening implemented by the US Federal Reserve. Although it’s possible the policy will constrain further growth in the US, it should be mitigated by growth in inventories and recovery in aircraft production, according to the bank.

“I’ve never worked so hard to give four clients $15m unsuccessfully.”

Meanwhile, fellow speaker, Jay Mesinger, CEO and founder, Mesinger Jet Sales has been left frustrated by new buyers slowing or cancelling transactions. “This is such an interesting topic. From the transactional perspective, the side the Josh, Adam and I share, it has been a frustrating time.”

There have been reports of some sellers forbidding pre-purchase inspections. “It’s just a function of how difficult the transactions are. Aircraft will come on in the morning, by lunchtime there are 10 full price offers and I wanted to run an add recently that said “Hire Mesinger Jet Sales and let us manage your greed,” because sellers just don’t want to stop!” he said.

Fellow panelist, Wes Romaine, vice president, ACI Aviation Consulting, said: “What we are seeing from a supply demand standpoint is obviously: demand is through the roof so high, and supply is so constrained. I think what we’re seeing roughly 2-2.5% across each segment of aircraft that are 28 years or older”

This lack of supply within the industry has naturally allowed the sellers to heavily influence the value of used aircraft. “With this demand, pricing has been driven through the roof and really each transaction sets this new benchmark,” said Romaine. “From our perspective, it is setting the benchmark for fair market value.”