Will the FBO Industry Get a Trump Bump in 2025?

The presidential re-election of Donald Trump initially created unbridled investor enthusiasm across the stock market based on promises to limit regulation, lower taxes and bring the cost of oil down with his battle cry of “Drill-Baby-Drill! Wall Street coined this eagerness a “Trump Bump.”

So will the FBO Industry get a Trump Bump of its own in 2025? To gain perspective we look at historic results of our Annual FBO Fuel Sales Survey that was initiated in 2014.   

As part of the survey, we asked FBO Owners and operators to answer the question: Is the economy headed in the right direction? This question is designed to gage survey respondents’ level of confidence in the economy.

The following graph shows how respondents answered this question over the past 11 years.

As the graph depicts, a Trump Bump first occurred in 2017 when Donald Trump took office for his first presidential term in 2017. The majority of survey respondents agreed that the economy was headed in the right direction with a 27% jump in economic confidence to 54%.

This was followed by an additional 19% positive bump in our 2018 survey resulting in a new high of 73% approval of the economy. In 2019, there was a 12% decline to 61% followed by an increase back to 73% in early 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

Also of note, is that from 2017 to early 2020, survey respondents on average, saw a slow but steady increase in fuel sales.

Another point of interest is that in 2017 the Dow Jones Industrial Average had broken through the 20,000 point mark. At the time of this post, the stock market is now hovering close to 44,000 points.

Although there is plenty of pent-up optimism for a steady economic recovery in 2025, the fact remains that inflation has not been totally tamed and the Fed may take a more measured pace in cutting rates.

FBOs will also be looking at the level of business aviation flying activity as the new administration sets policy. According to Argus International’s TraqPak data for the month of November, North American flight activity slowed 3.8% year-over-year.

Flight department budgets are still very sensitive to the cost of fuel. Oil prices have mostly settled between $70 and $80 per barrel for WTI causing Jet A prices to remain elevated from pre-pandemic levels. With the incoming Trump administration’s promise to ease regulations, a buildup of crude oil inventory should put downward pressure on oil prices later in 2025.

The wild card is the ever-changing geo/political forces and global events that can cause moderate to large swings in oil pricing. As in the past, the cost of Jet A will follow the cost of a barrel of oil.

In March, 2025, we will be posting our results from our latest FBO Fuel Sales Survey. So stay tuned to see how it all plays out and if there is a Trump Bump on the horizon for the FBO Industry.  

Please leave any comments you have about this blog post below. If you have any questions, please send us an email: John Enticknap, jenticknap@bellsouth.net,  Ron Jackson,  ronjacksongroup@gmail.com.

ABOUT THE BLOGGERS: John Enticknap is the founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group (ABSG). He has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience and is an IS-BAH Accredited auditor. Ron Jackson is co-founder of ABSG and president of The Jackson Group (TJG), a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.