Preowned helo market looking up

The report, which covers twin-engine helicopter markets, is a product of Aero Asset’s proprietary intelligence and market research.

“Clearly, the most active market during 2019 was the Airbus H145, which at the end of Q4 2019 had seven months of supply available for sale at 2019 trade levels,” said Aero Asset Research Director Valerie Pereira. “The market that saw the biggest improvement in liquidity last year was the H225, with a drop in absorption rate of three years, six months—to an 18-month supply at 2019 trade levels.”

During a press conference January 27 at HAI Heli-Expo 2020 in Anaheim, California, Emmanuel Dupuy, a sales director and founder of Aero Asset, highlighted a few models from the report. The Eurocopter EC145 C2 saw “a very busy market last year. The bulk of the market is VIP configuration, but [that was] only 20 percent of the sales. The EMS operators are really driving that market in 2019.”

“I think the pricing dropped to the point where single [-engine] owners have jumped into IFR twins,” Dupuy added.

Meanwhile, 33 preowned EC/H135 helicopters changed hands in 2018—a number that slowed considerably last year. “We were seeing a lot of high time [airframes] in the market that may not appeal to buyers,” Dupuy said.

And the introduction of new models, such as the Airbus Helicopters H160, might influence the market. “I think it will influence the EC155 market, not the EC139 market,” he said. “The EC160 is a great aircraft but it still needs to prove itself in the mission environment.”

Aero Asset’s market report ranks preowned helicopter markets from most to least active in 2019, based on their absorption rates, 2019 preowned sales, and active fleet size. It covers only twin-engine helicopter models still in production and recent variants with preowned sales activity. The report covers all weight classes and configurations, including VIP, offshore, utility, and EMS. The publicly released report is available from the Aero Asset website.