Two financial realities are converging. Cerulli Associates projects $124 trillion in assets will transfer between generations through 2048, with millennials receiving $46 trillion and Gen Z inheriting another $15 trillion. More than 50 percent of that volume, roughly $62 trillion, originates from households currently classified as high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth. Private aviation’s aircraft ownership market was built almost entirely by and for that exact demographic, through relationship networks, opaque pricing structures, and transaction processes that take weeks.
When those assets move, the buyers who receive them will not engage with aircraft ownership the way their predecessors did. That mismatch is already producing change. Sergey Petrossov, the entrepreneur who built JetSmarter into the world’s largest on-demand private jet AI-powered marketplace, has been mapping that mismatch for years. His latest venture, Aero Ventures, is built on the thesis that the incoming ownership cohort is underserved not because they lack wealth, but because the market has never given them the AI-based tools to engage with it on their own terms.
How quickly the rest of the market adapts will determine which operators, platforms, and advisors define the decade ahead.
A Transfer Unlike Prior Ones
The projections have climbed considerably since Cerulli’s earlier estimates. Fortune reported that the firm’s original 2020 figure of $84 trillion was restated to $100 trillion in 2023 dollars before rising further, reaching $124 trillion as equity prices gained 27 percent and real estate surged 39 percent from 2020 to 2023. The top 2 percent of American households now hold 44 percent of all wealth, up from 40 percent in 2020 and 33 percent in 2011. That concentration matters: the steeper it is, the larger the share of what’s being transferred that originates from buyers whose capital reaches aircraft-ownership territory.
Gen X collects the largest near-term share, roughly $14 trillion over the next decade. Millennials accumulate the larger cumulative total over 25 years, at $46 trillion. Gen Z follows with $15 trillion.
What this cohort chooses to do with inherited capital diverges from prior generations’ patterns. Bank of America Private Bank’s 2024 Study of Wealthy Americans, cited in a Merrill Lynch analysis, found that 72 percent of wealthy investors ages 21 to 43 believe “it’s no longer possible to achieve above-average returns solely on traditional stocks and bonds,” compared with 28 percent of investors 44 and older. Among the younger group, 26 percent identify private equity as their primary growth vehicle, nearly double the proportion among older investors. Hard assets, direct company ownership, and alternative investment categories rank higher for this cohort than for any prior generation of inheritors.
Aircraft, for buyers who can afford them, sit at the intersection of hard asset and operational tool. The question is whether the market serving them feels legible to buyers shaped by financial technology, transparent pricing platforms, and real-time data.
Who’s Buying Jets Now, and Where They Came From
The generational argument has moved from theory into transaction records. The share of pre-owned private jet buyers under 45 has nearly doubled over the last decade, reaching a record 29 percent of all purchases in 2024, according to Jetcraft’s “Ever Forward” market report. Jetcraft projects 11,202 pre-owned aircraft transactions over the next five years, totaling $73.9 billion in revenue. The direction of that market depends increasingly on buyers who reached capital through industries with fundamentally different information cultures.
Among Jetcraft’s under-45 buyers, 42 percent came from the entertainment sector and 29 percent were women, a compositional break from earlier buyer populations. Tech founders, early crypto beneficiaries, and entrepreneurs who built companies during the 2010s are acquiring aircraft at ages when prior generations were still accumulating toward that level of wealth.
This demographic carries specific expectations formed well outside aviation. Real estate platforms delivered transparent valuations and neighborhood-level comparables before a listing agent picked up the phone. Vehicle marketplaces provided verified histories, instant pricing estimates, and transaction comparables before any dealership conversation. Aircraft ownership, historically governed by opaque broker networks and relationship-dependent information, offers no equivalent entry point. When buyers who expect instant data access encounter that gap for the first time, many do not persist.
Petrossov’s Premise, Applied to Ownership
Sergey Petrossov, the University of Florida and Stanford-educated entrepreneur, has spent more than a decade identifying information friction in private aviation and building AI-driven systems to address it.
He founded JetSmarter in 2012, growing it into the world’s largest on-demand private jet AI-powered marketplace before Vista Global’s 2019 nine-figure acquisition, by targeting a charter market where booking still ran on multi-day phone processes and broker relationships. At Vista, as President of XO and Chief Growth and Digital Officer, he tripled XO’s revenue and tripled Vista Global’s profitability, according to NetNewsLedger, overseeing 360-plus aircraft and a 4,000-person operation across the combined network.
Aircraft ownership is the third application of that same analytical premise. Aviation Pros reported that Petrossov told the publication: “We digitized private aviation with JetSmarter and scaled it further with XO. Now, with Aero Ventures, we’re doing the same.”
Aero Ventures Marketplace launched in September 2025. The AI-powered platform delivers instant valuations for aircraft priced at $10 million and above, ownership cost simulations, five-year residual value forecasts, real-time absorption rate analytics, and AI-based financing with quote turnarounds of 24 to 48 hours. Capital-backed liquidity options allow sellers to receive cash offers within 48 hours, a departure from the weeks-long process that previously defined ownership-side transactions.
Bill Papariella, who built Jet Edge International from four aircraft to more than 100 and approximately $600 million in revenue before Vista Global’s 2022 acquisition, founded Aero Ventures and leads it as CEO. Aviation Pros quoted Papariella at launch: “Aero Ventures was built to deliver advisory that goes beyond the transaction -uniting deep operational expertise, strategic capital, and leading-edge technology in a seamless platform that optimizes balance sheets and transforms the private jet ownership experience.”
How Information Access Changes Who Can Participate
Aircraft ownership has always carried two distinct value propositions: operational utility and asset management. For prior owner generations, the two were largely bundled. The same network that sourced an aircraft also managed it, maintained the lender relationship, and handled eventual disposition. Advisors held information advantages that buyers rarely had independent access to.
The incoming wealth cohort approaches asset decisions differently. Seventy-two percent of younger investors, per the Bank of America Private Bank study, reject the premise that traditional investment vehicles deliver above-average returns. Private equity and direct asset ownership rank higher for this demographic than for any prior generation of inheritors. An aircraft treated as a managed hard asset, with predictable depreciation curves and calculable operating costs, fits naturally into that framework. The framing only holds if the information tools treat it as one.
The existing brokerage market does not. Valuations depend on which broker a buyer knows, how recently their network has transacted in similar aircraft, and how willing counterparties are to share actual sale prices. That information structure rewards incumbents and creates steep entry costs for new capital.
Aero Ventures’ AI platform aggregates true transaction prices, on- and off-market inventory data, aircraft specifications, and maintenance records to generate real-time fair market values. AI-based residual value modeling estimates future depreciation based on flight hours, maintenance history, and historical absorption patterns. The buyer who arrives at the platform without prior aviation relationships accesses the same AI-driven data quality that a veteran broker’s longtime client might have assembled over years. Rather than replacing the advisory relationship, the platform functions as an entry point for engagement, letting clients explore and simulate different ownership scenarios before contacting advisors.
Global Jet Capital projects at least $17.5 billion in annual pre-owned private jet sales over the next three years. The decade beyond that is the wealth transfer market: buyers in their 30s and 40s receiving capital from parents who built wealth before digital platforms existed, making their first aircraft ownership decisions in an environment where they expect data quality equivalent to any other asset class.
What Adapts, and at What Speed
The wealth transfer argument for aviation is not that millions of new buyers will flood the market. Aircraft ownership remains a narrow category defined by capital requirements and operational complexity.
The argument is subtler. Buyers entering over the next decade will arrive with different baseline expectations, and the platforms and advisors who meet those expectations early will set the terms of competition for years afterward. Aero Ventures’ curated access model, which vets participants before granting platform access and limits transactions to aircraft above $10 million, reflects a deliberate choice not to chase volume. The AI-powered platform is designed for buyers whose capital and operational complexity benefit from detailed ownership analytics, not a general listing marketplace.
For the broader private aviation industry, the wealth transfer represents a test of how quickly the ownership layer can update. Brokers and advisory firms built on relationship-network information advantages face an environment where that advantage is being reconfigured. Those who integrate AI-driven tools and data transparency into their offering gain a different kind of edge: the capacity to serve buyers who would never have engaged within the prior model at all.
The buyers who used digital charter platforms in their 20s are now in their 30s. The ones who built tech companies and crypto portfolios in the 2010s are entering their peak earning decades with capital and no legacy connections to the networks that have historically governed aircraft ownership. Aero Ventures is built on the thesis that those buyers represent an underserved segment, not because they lack wealth, but because the market has never given them the AI-based tools to engage with it on their own terms.
Written in partnership with Tom White
