You know the world has changed when your financial advisor calls gushing about what a great day the market had. It lost only 300 points on moderate trading and hes certain the bottom is near. (Until, that is, investors find a way to tap yet deeper negative stratas.)

In days of yore, stock market fluctuations far more benign than what weve seen since August have tended to spook airplane buyers into slamming their wallets shut. It stands to reason, then, that the current blood bath on Wall Street should have sent buyers burrowing deep underground, right?

Not really, according to our recent survey of aircraft brokers we know. No one

would describe the market as booming, but our interviews with brokers revealed less softness than we would have expected and, more important, there are some surprisingly good opportunities for buyers seeking deals on late-model used aircraft-prices are reasonable, inventory is high and sellers are adapting to this new reality. The world is less rosy for owners trying to sell run-of-the-mill, average airplanes, but these airplanes can still move, if the seller is willing to get the price right. (Thats another way of saying if youve got an average airframe tending toward the beater side of the spectrum, don’t expect to get a price anywhere near Bluebook value.)

Whats It Worth?

And what is Bluebook value, anyway? All of the brokers we spoke to told us that in the current market, the accepted price guides offer more heat than light on true market value.

“These books don’t mean a lot anymore,” says Jimmy Garrison of All American Aircraft, a San Antonio brokerage that specializes in Mooneys. These days, he estimates value based on his own knowledge of the market and by relying on what traditionally has been the worst way of determining value: scanning the asking prices in for-sale listings in such publications a Trade-A-Plane, Controller and Aircraft Shopper Online.

Garrison believes the market is too dynamic for survey-based pricing guides to keep up, so he scans the listings to sense price trends and, by sixth sense, knocks out the outliers that are too high. “Im a dealer who watches a specific niche, so I can look at a price in a listing and know that its just not reality,” Garrison says. Example: an owners fawned-over mid-1980s J-model Mooney with a $150,000 asking price. “Thats just not going to happen,” says Garrison.

In the current market, youd think that the sheer volume of owners trying to unload airplanes at any price would be staggering, but thats not really the case.

“Overall, the number of listings is not up,” says Trade-A-Planes Cosby Stone. “But the composition of listings has changed, probably toward having more high-end airplanes. You see a lot of later model airplanes now and thats probably where the best deals are,” Stone says.

“This is not what you would call a normal market. Its a schizophrenic market. There are people who will sell at whatever price because they have to and there are sellers who are just delusional about what their airplanes are really worth,” he adds.

Wistful Sellers

This was a sentiment we heard repeatedly in talking to brokers and dealers. None of the brokers we interviewed reported dealing with owners who are so strapped that they absolutely have to sell their airplanes right away, this despite nearly 1000-point swings in the Dow on a weekly basis.

“Were in a slower overall aircraft market, no question,” says Fred Ahles of Fort