Aerospace Opportuntiies Abound Today

Implications: Nodoby likes to be overly optimistic, especially these days, but strangely, many people looking in on the aerospace industry (especially those on the periphery -- and I don't just mean the BBC) can't see the wood for the trees. And in their little worlds, those trees are all falling down. Strange indeed.

Analysis: Canada's Bombardier doesn't seem to employ doom-and-gloom merchants, at least in its forecasting departments. As the company said on Monday at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) show in Orlando, FL, "..while some softening of the business aviation market will occur in the next year or two, the long-term prospects call for expansion and fleet replacement totaling 13,200 business jets, worth $300 billion over the next 10 years...".

There's a lot more that's worth quoting, particularly on unsustainable backlogs and corporate focus, but it's not practical to do so here. The featured article is short and well worth reading.

In the past week the industry's leading independent consultancy, the Teal Group of Fairfax, Va and the world #1 in commercial avionics, Honeywell, have issued long-term bizjet forecasts underscored by positive if not record numbers -- opportunities for business rather than opposition to growth. Sure, they both rightly pay attention to the short-term financial instability in the global marketplace but both assume long-term trends will reinstate themselves after only a short-term of slower growth.

Most commentators spend their time and bandwidth attempting to guess at what temperature the global aerospace meltdown will take place (that includes practically everyone from Bloomberg at the top of the tree, with its near-hysterical focus on statistics at the expense of the strategic picture, to one-laptop bloggers with WiFi access, a worldwide audience and absolutely no vision beyond this Friday...). But the industry reality as encompassed by Bombardier, Teal and Honeywell amongst many others is that yes, of course, times are tough but the outlook is good if not record, the industry's fundamentals have survived even a ludicrously speculative and unsupportable oil-price hike and there are opportunities out there. Big opportunities.

Aerospace is a long-term business. So why all this focus on today when the longer-term picture tells a more accurate story?