Great Article For Aircraft Buyers & Sellers

[jjbaker]

Rick Durden is the author of this refreshingly honest slap for all those looking to buy a plane.
100% information, terribly honest and good to wipe the pink clouds off the buyers eyes prior to loosing serious money.

http://www.avweb.com/news/features/Your-Refurb-Fresh-Annual-and-Other-Scams-225065-1.html

[TriPacer]

While I do agree about most everything in there, I still think people put exhorbitant numbers on this stuff. 25% of the purchase price for things to go wrong in year 1? That seems pretty excessive to me. I have yet to see any numbers like those that are tossed about in these articles supported by any sort of data. I think lots of people just hand their A&Ps a blank check to do whatever. A little elbow grease goes a long way to saving some money (and allows the owner to actually get to know the plane).

We were going to buy a 182A early on that had the float kit and a set of floats with hardware, but they hadn't been attached to each other yet. Long story short, the seller had the wrong parts for mounting the floats and it would have cost us a ridiculous amount of money. Due diligence is definitely a requirement.

On the rose-colored glasses side, though, it's funny to me how crazy we all seem to go over purchasing and running numbers. For example, how much will the annual cost, how much will it cost me every month for X, Y, and Z? Then, after you own it, you just sort of let all that go. No one puts that level of effort into a car purchase, as far as I can tell.

[RKittine]

I have owned some three dozen aircraft in my life and always had some Post Purchase issues that cost me more than I had hoped or expected. In some cases more then 25% of the purchase price, but then the purchase price was low. Over 40% on my 7CCM to get it truly legal. Three were bought factory new and still had post purchase maintenance, but that was covered by warrantee. If there was a better variety of rental aircraft (flaot planes, high performance etc.) and better access (no hourly minimum per day) many would be better served renting.

Bob