July did the heavy lifting. Inventory came down hard while sales kept moving, and the Challenger 300 enters August tighter than it has been all year. Twenty-nine aircraft have sold in the past six months against 18 available today. The market is absorbing airplanes faster than it is replacing them.
Fleet Size and Availability
There are 18 Challenger 300s for sale, or 4.1% of the fleet.
From February through June, availability barely moved, holding between 22 and 25 aircraft. July broke the pattern. Supply fell from 25 aircraft in June to 19 in July, and it sits at 18 today.
At 4.1%, buyers are picking from a thin shelf, and that is worth putting next to the 6.5% of the fleet that has traded in the past six months. More airplanes changed hands than are currently on offer.
Market Listings
Asking prices run $7.0 million to $13.595 million. Six-month sold prices ran $8.4 million to $13.2 million.
That spread is not noise. Model year, total time, maintenance status, engine program enrollment, cabin and exterior condition, and overall pedigree all move the number on this airframe, and they move it a long way. Two Challenger 300s with the same year on the paperwork can live in completely different price neighborhoods.
Current listings average 171 days on market. Aircraft sold over the past six months averaged 177 days. Those two numbers sitting on top of each other matter: the available fleet is not a pile of stale listings nobody wants. What is out there is roughly as marketable as what already sold.
Sales Activity
Twenty-nine Challenger 300s have sold in the past six months, 13 of them off market.
The monthly rhythm was uneven. Six in February, seven in March, four in April. May dropped to a single transaction before June rebounded to six and July closed with five.
July is the month worth staring at. Five sales, and six airplanes came off the advertised list. Not every inventory change is a completed retail sale, but the direction here is not ambiguous.
Key Takeaways
• 18 aircraft available, 4.1% of the fleet.
• 29 aircraft sold in six months, 6.5% of the fleet.
• 13 of those 29 were off market, close to half the activity in this market never hit an advertisement.
• 5 sales in July, following 6 in June.
• Advertised inventory fell from 25 in June to 19 in July.
• Current and sold days on market are nearly identical at 171 and 177.
Key Insight
This is a seller’s market for anyone willing to do the prep work. Inventory has tightened, volume has held, and nearly half of recent trades happened outside the public listings. If you are shopping the advertised fleet only, you are looking at a fraction of the market and probably the wrong fraction. A properly priced Challenger 300 with clean records and a solid maintenance position is not going to sit. Buyers who want the good ones need to be working the phones, not the listing sites.
