Aircraft Leasing is Here to Stay

Implications: The aerospace industry today is depressingly replete with rent-a-quote, doomsday merchants who're only ever capable of worst-case rather than more useful, objective speculation. "AIG was near-collapse, so ILFC's business is in danger and therefore the entire aerospace industry is at risk...". Watch out for that meteorite...

Analysis: "The prettier the graphic and the more glitzy the website/blog, the less import the message usually has."

Nothing could be closer to the truth today in light of the increasing flow of aerospace nonsense spewed out by once-reputable publications at one end of the spectrum and at the other, by the type of Everyman aviation blog or aerospace "reference center" where facts are like desert snow and objective analysis a veritable mirage. Puh-leeze, people.

ILFC is an opportunity. Sure, the circumstances are far from ideal but the business model is rock-solid. Any and all speculation to the contrary is like mountain-and-molehill stuff.

The numbers have been quoted elsewhere so no need here. Suffice to say Airbus and Boeing both value ILFC as a customer with influence. The lessor has on numerous occasions over the past 15+ years given Airbus the necessary market support it needed to launch various aircraft programs, and has subsequently been very well rewarded with customized, favorable purchase deals. ILFC and Boeing enjoy a different level of relationship, one with more solidity and longer-term balance, but theirs is still a very good working rapport, a fact which has nothing to do with AIG.

ILFC has actually even been getting a little big for its boots in recent years, as has Emirates, with both parties yanking Airbus' chain as if they were the only players in town. Well, they're certainly the biggest in terms of $-value orders, the US outfit because its business model works well and the Middle Eastern concern because it can afford to sit at the top table, especially since its own government and Airbus combined have well and truly set a place for it, padded cushions and all.

Strong profitable industry leaders with proven business models do not disappear overnight. ILFC will soon be the jewel in someone else's crown, but a jewel it will remain nonetheless. Aircraft leasing is here to stay.