General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) President and CEO Pete Bunce believes that aircraft orders should pick up now that the US elections are over.
According to Bunce, the industry recovery was stymied by customers closing their cheque books until they knew who was going to be in the White House.
“What we heard from our customers recently at AOPA’s summit and NBAA’s convention indicate that purchase decisions continue to be delayed due to fiscal uncertainty in our North American and European markets," he said.
"Now that the US election is behind us, we hope that legislators quickly act on the nation’s budget crisis so that individuals and businesses can begin to chart their own long range fiscal paths."
Bunce made the comments as GAMA released the manufacturers' delivery figures for the third quarter of the US fiscal year.
Shipments of aircraft are up 4.2% over the same period of 2011, with turbine aircraft showing a clean set of heels to prop-driven aeroplanes once again.
Cessna leads the turbo-props with their C208B chalking up 22 deliveries for the quarter, against 21 for the second quarter. By comparison, Pilatus delivered 17 PC12s, Piper 8 Meridians, and Socata 7 TBM 850s.
Diamond's single-engine DA40 was the stand-out piston for the quarter, more that doubling it's second-quarter shipments to 36, keeping the Cirrus SR22T (25), SR20 (24) and Cessna's C172SP (23) out of top spot.
Other Significant Third-Quarter Deliveries
- Bombardier Global 5000: 17
- C162 Skycatcher: 4
- Cessna 350 Corvalis: 0
- Citation CJ4: 11
- GippsAERO GA8: 2
- G36 Bonanza: 4
- King Air 350i: 10
- PAC 750XL: 1
- Piper Mirage: 13
- Piper Archer: 1
- Quest Kodiak 100: 3