It’s late and I’m tired, but I’m proud.

It’s late and I’m tired, but I’m proud.  I am on a late flight home on Friday night.  I have been in four cities since last Sunday and I wouldn’t trade any of it.  I have been in Tucson, Arizona to show a Global Express that we are selling.  From there, I went home to Boulder, Colorado long enough to repack and sleep for about 3 hours before heading to go to Houston, Texas to show a Falcon 2000 and from there on to New York to show both a Gulfstream IV and a Falcon 900EX for two different clients to two different buyers.

We still have problems in our industry.  Not every market is recovering.  Overall, however, people are flying.  People are buying airplanes.  People are modifying and refurbishing airplanes.  I think that mostly, people (and companies) are excited to get out again.  They are excited and ready to go see their clients, customers, partners and operations and travel for personal reasons.  We still have obstacles and hurdles to cross.  Parts of our global economy are still struggling and some are just starting to experience their worst pain.   Our aircraft finance markets are still weak and the lenders inability to see the value in older aircraft not only saddens me, but angers me.  I could understand it a year and two years ago when prices were inflated in some cases 100 percent and values were in free fall.  Today, however, at current market values our financial institutions need to recalculate their understanding of true value and not write off the majority of corporate aircraft worldwide because of age alone.

I am proud of the work that I have done this week.  During over two years of slow sales we (J. Mesinger Corporate Jet Sales, Inc.) never put up the “gone fishing” sign.  We never retreated.  Instead, we diligently kept up our communications.  We maintained our marketing.  We supported our clients’ needs.  We provided good guidance and good information to help them make smart informed decisions in difficult times.  As a result, today, we are busy.  And tomorrow, we will still be busy and we will continue to thrive in our industry. We also don’t do it alone.  We have a lot of good peers in our industry and this week I met with many of them as they represented buyers for aircraft that we are representing for sale and we talked to several representing sellers for aircraft we are working to buy for clients.  Thank you to all of you in our industry that kept working hard in our hard times.  Thank you to all of our clients for your support.  People don’t often stop long enough to say thank you.  We could not do this if we were not all doing it together.  Tonight, on this late flight home, it’s late and I’m tired, but I am proud.