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And while business has ebbed a bit compared with last year, it remains four times what Cage saw before the recession.

“I think we picked up 15 (planes) that were $1 million or more, including one $20 million jet,” says Cage, president of International Recovery & Remarketing Group in Orlando, reflecting on the past 12 months. “We’d never picked up anything close to that before.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the nation’s steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression has also struck the rich. One indicator has been the number of private planes repossessed from owners who can no longer pay the notes or who are buried under liens stemming from unpaid maintenance and fuel bills.

“The small, single-engine Cessnas and Pipers are being repossessed all the way on up to 747s,” says Terence Haglund, founder of the Aviation Law Center in Williamsburg, Va., who represents many lenders. “It’s definitely recession-related, and it’s been increasing for the last couple of years.”

He doesn’t see the repossessions dipping significantly any time soon. “I think it’ll continue,” he says. “It has not slowed down yet.”

The beleaguered owners include businesses that have acquired corporate jets, affluent professionals who may choose to cruise the skies in small Pipers, and the fabulously wealthy who once had their pick among all of the above.

“A lot of what we’re seeing is … their aircraft are no longer worth what they were when they paid for them (and), they can no longer afford to operate and maintain them,” Haglund says. Some owners, he says, also get into trouble when they lease their planes to charter companies that then fail to pay what they owe for fuel, airport access and other services. That leads to liens on the aircraft.