In mid-October 2025, 27 pre-owned Gulfstream G650s were listed for purchase, roughly 4.5% of the active fleet, according to JetBook Services data cited by OGARAJETS CEO Johnny Foster.
Fifteen were already under contract and awaiting final signatures. Seven more carried foreign registrations, which meant any American buyer who wanted one faced uncertain Customs and Border Protection processing and potential tariff exposure that could delay closing or push costs past anything a seller would accept. Five G650s were realistically available to the U.S. market.
Foster offered that account to AvBuyer’s December 2025 market analysis as an illustration of what tariffs had done to effective supply. “The supply for U.S. buyers is still pretty thin — inventory data suggests that 6% of business jets are available,” he told the publication. An 8% availability rate represents an equilibrium market. At 6%, the overall picture falls firmly on the seller side before the tariff discount is applied. That was the environment Aero Ventures entered when it launched its public marketplace on September 3, 2025, under the direction of Sergey Petrossov, who trained at Stanford and the University of Florida and serves as the firm’s Managing Partner.
What Tariffs Did to the Supply Pool
The Trump administration’s 2025 tariff schedules were not designed for business aviation. Their effects on the pre-owned jet market were indirect, structural, and sharper than most participants anticipated.
Aircraft manufactured in countries subject to tariffs, including Israel, Canada, and European Union nations, could be assessed import duties when brought onto a U.S. registry. Buyers and their counsel grew reluctant to pursue foreign-registered aircraft because the cost and timing of tariff imposition remained unclear. Foster cited two OGARAJETS clients who abandoned deals on Israel-manufactured Gulfstream G280s after a 10% tariff on Israeli goods pushed purchase prices to a level he described as “unpalatable.” “In the absence of clarity, very few people have been willing to take risks,” he told AvBuyer.
The administration did reach bilateral tariff-free agreements with several major aircraft-manufacturing nations during 2025, but federal implementation lagged. CBP reportedly continued levying tariffs on at least some foreign-sourced aircraft into Q3, according to AvBuyer’s reporting. That delay, combined with the Dec. 31 deadline for 2025 bonus depreciation eligibility, compressed the effective decision window for buyers considering any foreign-registered aircraft. The result was a buyer pool increasingly concentrated on U.S.-registered aircraft, a segment that was already shrinking for separate reasons.
Embraer models assembled in Florida (the Phenom 100, Phenom 300, Praetor 500, and Praetor 600) qualified as tariff-free. Embraer aircraft assembled in Brazil did not. The HondaJet, assembled in North Carolina, also cleared the threshold. For most of the market, though, the effective domestic supply pool was considerably smaller than headline inventory figures indicated.
Two Forces, One Direction
At the same time tariffs were suppressing available supply, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, reinstated 100% first-year depreciation for aircraft purchases with no phase-down schedule. Buyers who placed a qualifying aircraft into service before year-end could deduct the full purchase price.
PNC Aviation Finance’s Ramy Sidhom, in a January 2026 analysis, spelled out the timing pressure directly: “Since aircraft purchases are complex and time-consuming, waiting too long could mean missing the window to close by year end.” Keith Hayes, PNC’s national sales manager, confirmed the OBBBA effect was measurable. He predicted strong Q4 2025 conditions would carry into 2026. Finance rates had come down and were expected to remain stable.
The combination of compressed supply and tax-driven urgency turned transaction speed from a preference into a competitive variable. The G650 example captured the logic precisely: when five aircraft are realistically available to an active buyer pool, the owner who can close with certainty commands the best outcome. A seller holding a desirable, U.S.-registered aircraft in late 2025 held more leverage than the listing inventory numbers suggested. The value of that leverage depended entirely on how quickly a buyer could demonstrate the ability to close.
Aero Ventures’ Offer Structure
Aero Ventures launched with a specific mechanism built for that kind of environment: guaranteed cash offers within 48 hours, backed by AI-driven valuations drawing on real-time domestic transaction data, and bridge financing for sellers with immediate liquidity needs. The platform focuses on transactions of $10 million and above, a segment where execution certainty and valuation precision carry the most weight. The platform aggregates verified closed-price records, maintenance histories, and market comparables across aircraft types to generate valuations that don’t rely on broker estimates or static price guides.
As Corporate Jet Investor reported, Petrossov identifies the platform’s key differentiator as pairing that digital capability with direct access to capital: “bespoke finance solutions, including instant guaranteed purchase offers or bridge financing.” That capital access is what makes the 48-hour offer credible. Traditional broker-led transactions move at a different pace.
IADA’s Q4 2025 market report, covered by Private Jet Card Comparisons, showed IADA-accredited dealers completing transactions in an average of 155 days in 2025, which was 19% faster than the broader industry average of 192 days. IADA members represent 7% of the world’s aircraft dealers but account for 40% of pre-owned sales by volume, translating to more than $6 billion annually. Their 155-day average represents the fastest tier of brokerage performance. A guaranteed cash offer compresses that timeline by a different order of magnitude. For a seller trying to capture year-end bonus depreciation demand before a buyer’s tax calendar closes, the difference between 155 days and 48 hours carries real economic weight.
Why Closed Data Matters for Valuation
IADA members closed 1,630 aircraft deals in 2025, the fourth consecutive year of increased annual transactions, per Private Jet Card Comparisons. Q4 2025 produced 647 closed sales, up from 562 in the same period of 2024. New acquisition agreements in Q4 rose 33% year-over-year. Market conditions, rated on a 1-to-5 scale by IADA members, reached 3.72 in Q4, the highest reading of the year.
That transaction volume is relevant to Aero Ventures for a specific reason. Listing prices in thin-inventory environments routinely overstate market clearing levels: sellers price to what the previous peak buyer paid, not to what a buyer can close today. A platform drawing on verified closed-price data, maintenance cost histories, and five-year residual value forecasts tracks actual market conditions rather than asking-price sentiment. For aviation, where transactions are bilateral and prices aren’t publicly reported, aggregating real closed-price data is a structural challenge that compounds in difficulty as the market grows. The more transactional data the platform has access to, the more precisely subsequent valuations reflect where the market actually clears.
The Advisory Model
Aero Ventures’ platform design reflects a deliberate position on what can be automated. For a seller seeking a preliminary valuation and certainty of execution, the platform handles that phase directly. For a transaction involving unusual maintenance history, competing ownership structures, or layered financing, the advisory team leads. Corporate Jet Investor reported Petrossov framing the approach as enhancing the peer-to-peer advisory model rather than supplanting it; the platform functions as an entry point that lets owners “window shop” and run ownership scenarios before any human-to-human conversation begins.
Petrossov’s background at JetSmarter, which grew to a unicorn valuation before Vista Global’s 2019 acquisition, and his subsequent role as President of XO and Chief Growth & Digital Officer of Vista Global gave him operational visibility into how digital platforms absorb complexity at scale. Bill Papariella founded Aero Ventures and brings transactional depth from a different angle. He grew Jet Edge International from four aircraft to more than 100 jets and roughly $600 million in revenue before Vista Global’s acquisition in 2022. The Aero Ventures team has closed more than $5 billion in aircraft transactions.
What Comes Next for Supply
PNC expects tight conditions to persist well into 2026. Hayes projected that OEM delivery backlogs, averaging two years or more, would continue pushing buyers toward pre-owned aircraft throughout the year. Sidhom noted that inventory of current-production, younger aircraft remained “considerably low” despite a growing supply of older, out-of-production models.
Foster, meanwhile, cautioned that “going into 2026 with very low supply numbers for the pre-owned market” left open the question of whether supply could rebuild sufficiently in the first three quarters to support Q4 volume. “The question then becomes, will there be enough time in the first three quarters of 2026 to build up supply again for Q4 2026?” he told AvBuyer.
The tariff environment is easing as bilateral agreements reduce import exposure. But buyer psychology and CBP processing delays introduced during 2025 mean hesitance toward foreign-registered aircraft will likely outlast the formal policy changes. That sustained preference for domestic-registry aircraft keeps the effective supply pool narrow even as headline inventory figures inch upward.
Aero Ventures’ thesis doesn’t require tariffs to remain in place. Thin domestic inventory, time-sensitive tax incentives, and a growing buyer pool were all present before the tariff schedules reshaped the import market. The tariff environment provided the clearest possible proof-of-concept: it concentrated U.S. buyer demand on domestic-registry aircraft, compressed transaction timelines, and placed a premium on certainty of execution that the platform’s guaranteed cash offer was built to meet.
