When The Guardian reported this month that UK charter firm Air Charter Service was ‘going gangbusters’, with requests up by 200–300%, it confirmed what many in private aviation were already seeing on the ground, but charter demand tells only part of the story.
Where the charter market offers a measure of immediate demand, Sprinkle, one of the world’s largest online aircraft marketplaces, with more than 1,000 jets listed for sale at any one time, provides visibility into the other side of the equation: what buyers are searching for, which aircraft are drawing the most attention, and whether supply exists to meet it. Taken together, the data points to a market under increasing strain, with demand rising sharply just as availability in the most relevant aircraft categories tightens.
Sprinkle’s marketplace data shows that buyer interest in private jets rose by around 1,900% from early January to a peak in late February, as tensions between the US-Israel coalition and Iran moved towards open conflict.
This was not a gradual uplift either, activity accelerated rapidly throughout February, doubling week on week before settling at roughly 20 times the January baseline, a pace of growth the marketplace says it has not recorded during previous geopolitical flashpoints. The shift began in mid-February, around two weeks before the first strikes on 28 February, suggesting the market was reacting before the wider news cycle had fully caught up.
Demand has not been spread evenly across the market, but has instead concentrated around aircraft best suited to long-range travel and evacuation scenarios.
Gulfstream pages saw the sharpest growth, with buyer interest rising by more than 5,000% between early January and late February, while Cessna Citation traffic increased by around 3,100% over the same period. Interest in Embraer and Phenom aircraft also rose sharply from negligible levels, while Bombardier, whose Challenger and Global families remain among the most established long-range platforms in business aviation, saw buyer interest increase by around 750%.
These are not simply aspirational searches, the aircraft attracting the most attention, including the Gulfstream G550, Bombardier Global 7500 and Embraer Praetor 600, are among the models best suited to long-distance flights out of the Gulf.
At first glance, supply appears healthy and Sprinkle currently carries more than 1,000 active jet-for-sale listings across all major manufacturers, with a median asking price of $3.35 million and an average of $5.3 million, lifted by a relatively small number of ultra-long-range flagship aircraft at the top end of the market.
Yet that headline inventory looks far less reassuring once the market is narrowed to the heavy and ultra-long-range jets buyers currently need most.
Among those aircraft, availability is limited: 23 Gulfstream G550s are listed globally, alongside just five G650 or G650ERs, 15 Bombardier Global 6000s, seven Global 7500s, 18 Dassault Falcon 7Xs, four Falcon 8Xs and five Gulfstream G500s. In total, fewer than 80 heavy jets are listed for sale worldwide, a remarkably small pool for a market responding to a major international crisis.
The timing of the supply squeeze is equally striking and in January, new aircraft listings were appearing at a steady pace, but by late February, just as demand was peaking, the rate of new supply had fallen by more than 98%, suggesting sellers were choosing to hold rather than bring aircraft to market.
The reasons may vary, from uncertainty around replacement costs to reluctance to sell into a volatile environment, but the result is the same, supply tightened just as urgency among buyers intensified. Although the first week of March showed a partial recovery in new listings, this is more likely to reflect delayed publication than a genuine return of supply, while the number of jets being marked as sold has dropped by more than 90% since January, pointing less to weaker appetite than to a shortage of suitable aircraft available to transact.
Sprinkle’s data from the past two weeks also reveals a geographic pattern that closely mirrors the crisis. The United States accounts for around 77% of all jet-related search activity, broadly consistent with the estimated 500,000 Americans in the affected region, while Turkey has emerged as the third-largest source of buyer interest behind only the US and Brazil, reflecting its role as a key overland transit route for those leaving the Gulf.
The UK, France, Canada, India and Germany also feature prominently, each with sizeable expatriate populations in the region, while traffic from the Middle East itself is relatively limited, likely because those already in the region are not browsing aircraft purchase listings but seeking immediate charter access instead.
The broader message from the market is clear, demand rose before the conflict formally escalated, supply is far thinner than headline inventory suggests, and pricing pressure is likely to remain one-way.
With only five Gulfstream G650 or G650ER aircraft listed globally, and many offered on a price-on-request basis, the secondary market for ultra-long-range jets has little room to loosen while demand remains elevated. As JET-VIP chief executive Altay Kula said this month, “The demand is huge, and we can’t deliver enough aircraft to respond to the demand.”
