US Bonus Depreciation Revival Gives Jet Buyers a First-Year Write-Off

This week's reporting does not add up to a single argument. Two NBAA scholarship announcements, a vendor-run studio returning to NBAA-BACE, an 80th-anniversary profile of a Wichita MRO, a fractional operator's cabin Wi-Fi rollout and a generic explainer on the cost of flying private all sit alongside one story that actually touches what a buyer pays: a revived US tax break on business aircraft purchases. No source connects these items to one another. This piece treats the tax change as the week's one substantive story for owners and buyers, and works through it in full, noting the rest only where it bears on cost or access.

Per Simple Flying, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, restored 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying business property, including eligible aircraft acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025. Businesses can now deduct the full qualifying cost of an aircraft in its first year rather than spreading the deduction across multiple tax years, and the provision removed a scheduled phaseout that had been reducing the incentive under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The same article cites a Honeywell forecast of 8,500 new business jet deliveries worldwide between 2025 and 2034, presented as evidence the tax change is shaping buying decisions. The reporting does not show the mechanism linking the law to that figure, and no sales or order data from the period since the bill passed is given to support the connection directly.

What the tax change means for a buyer

For a business that qualifies, the practical effect is straightforward: instead of depreciating an aircraft's cost over several years, the full qualifying amount can be written off against income in the year the aircraft is placed in service. That is a direct change to the after-tax cost of a purchase, which is why it sits squarely in the first question this publication's readers ask of any story — does it change what I pay. Simple Flying frames this as an incentive to buy sooner rather than later, since the provision applies to aircraft acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025.

What the reporting does not say is just as important. It does not state how the deduction interacts with fractional ownership structures, where a buyer holds a share rather than a whole aircraft, nor whether charter operators acquiring aircraft for revenue fleets see the same treatment as a corporate flight department buying outright. Readers weighing a purchase against bonus depreciation should confirm the mechanics with a tax adviser rather than infer them from this coverage.

A thinner story on what flying actually costs

Simple Flying also published a separate piece this week describing the cost of flying private in the US in 2026 as ranging from a few thousand dollars for a short turboprop hop to well over $100,000 for a long trip on a large business jet. The article argues that how a customer buys a flight — a single charter versus a jet card programme — matters as much as the aircraft type in determining price.

That piece offers no percentages, no rate tables and no named operators, and it does not connect to the bonus depreciation story in any way a source states. It reads as a general explainer rather than news, and it does not change the picture for anyone deciding whether to buy, card or charter this week.

Elsewhere this week

PlaneSense said on October 15, 2026, that it plans to equip all 71 of its Pilatus aircraft — PC-12 turboprops and PC-24 jets — with Gogo Galileo satellite Wi-Fi by the end of 2027, with the agreement covering its current fleet and future deliveries. The first Galileo-equipped PC-24 is scheduled for delivery in late October 2026, and Pro Star Aviation will handle PC-12 installations under a separate agreement. None of this touches pricing for PlaneSense's fractional customers in the reporting supplied.

FlightGlobal profiled Yingling Aviation's 80th year based in Wichita, where the MRO firm now occupies some 46,000 sq m (500,000 sq ft) and draws around half its business from Textron customers. Yingling is majority owned by AE Industrial Partners, a Boca Raton, Florida-based private equity firm. The piece is a capacity-and-ownership story, not a pricing one.

NBAA named Morgan Cooper the 2026 winner of the Jake Cartwright Leadership Scholarship and Josh Gayoso, CAM, the recipient of the 2026 C&W Family Scholarship. The association also confirmed the Creator Studio, powered by Signature Aviation, is returning at NBAA-BACE 2026 following its 2025 debut. Both are routine trade-association announcements with no bearing on what a reader pays or whether they can get an aircraft.

Where this could be wrong

The bonus depreciation story rests on a single tier-three outlet, Simple Flying, with no corroboration from the IRS, FAA, NBAA or another publication in the material supplied. The Honeywell forecast of 8,500 deliveries between 2025 and 2034 is quoted without methodology or date of issue, and the article's headline framing — that the tax change is "fueling" jet sales — is not backed by any order or delivery data from the period since the law took effect. The causal claim is the outlet's framing, not a demonstrated fact.

What to watch

Watch for manufacturer order books or NBAA commentary that ties actual purchase timing to the January 19, 2025 qualifying date, which would test whether the incentive is doing what Simple Flying says it is doing. Watch also for whether Honeywell's 8,500-aircraft forecast is revised, and whether other outlets independently confirm the scale of the effect this one has only asserted.