Embraer Executive Aircraft President Ernie Edwards visited Australia in March to try to determine why local customers buy so many used aircraft instead of new.
According to Edwards, this characteristic of the Australian market is out of step with the rest of the world.
"If you look at the sales over the last five years you’ll find that 85-90% of the aircraft that have come in here have been used, pre-flown airplanes," he told Australian Flying. "That’s very peculiar; it’s not like the rest of the world.
"Even then, they are not reasonably new pre-flown airplanes. It’s an anomaly that we’re trying to understand. There’s been two or three new airplanes and again, because of the distance they’ve been larger airplanes.
"So it’s been about what we can do to motivate the Australian buyer to buy new. One of the banks told us that because pre-flown prices are at an historic low, there’s a tremendous value that people are seeing."
The aircraft Embraer is pushing into Australia are the longer-range Lineage and new Legacy 650. The company is having trouble getting the smaller Phenom 100 and 300 accepted into most markets in Asia Pacific because customers need jets with longer legs.
Consequently, Embraer's potential customers tend to be those in the high end of the market.
"Private owners and high net-worth individuals are the market," said Edwards. "Corporate buying doesn’t seem to be as prevalent here as it is in the US or even Brazil or China. It’s the high net-worth individuals that are buying and they seem to be buying pre-flown airplanes because they’re recognizing what they believe is great value."
There are currently two Phenom 100s and a Legacy 600 jets on the Australian civil register.