ORLANDO — Interest in new aircraft is picking up and — after a year of cancellations and deferrals — the order book is starting to stabilize, three Hawker Beechcraft executives said this morning.
I caught up with the HBC execs after the company’s press conference this morning at the Orange County Convention Center. HBC kicked off a day of press briefings.
They said this NBAA convention will be telling.
August and September were the best months of the year, said Brad Hatt, head of commercial aircraft.
“We can concentrate on selling rather than preserving,” said Brad Stancil, the company’s vice president of sales for the Western Hemisphere.
“Large Fortune 100 companies came back into the market in the last 60 days,” Hatt said.
”They have been absent up until now,” Stancil added.
The international market is much stronger than the domestic one, with 70 percent to 80 percent of sales coming from outside the U.S.
Several international customers are making the trip to Orlando for this week’s show, said Sean McGeough, vice president of sales for the Eastern Hemisphere said.
Whether that interest will turn into sales is too soon to say, they said.
