How To Buy An Airplane With Jamie Beckett Episode 1 - MzeroA Flight Training

hey there i'm jamie beckett aopa foundation ambassador in florida and a great friend and fan of m0a.com hey i'm here to talk to you today about a topic that's near and dear to my heart and i'll bet it's near and dear to yours too in fact i think it might be the dream of every pilot we're going to talk about how to buy an airplane part one [Music] buying an airplane really is one of the great dreams that pilots have even before they start flight training the idea of having the freedom of being able to get into an aircraft that you own take off wherever you are go wherever you want to go that amount of liberty is just intoxicating good word don't you think look you probably can own an airplane but it requires some thought and some planning it's a big purchase it's more than a car very often although it may cost what a motorcycle costs there's a huge spectrum from just a few thousand dollars up to millions so let's take a look at what it would take for you to buy an airplane that works for you and that's important because the airplane that's perfect for you may not be the airplane that's perfect for me and it's probably not the airplane that's perfect for jason so let's talk about it first a little personal history the first airplane i wanted to buy was a taylor craft a little bc 12d it was sitting on the side of the main building in meredith markham airport in meredith connecticut where i was a flight instructor now this is more than 30 years ago it was one of the ugliest airplanes i'd ever seen but the owner only wanted seven thousand dollars and i knew this because there was a piece of cardboard in the window that said for sale seven thousand dollars i'd never bought an airplane i was a flight instructor but i've never actually paid to buy the airplane and do the maintenance and i didn't really know a lot about what was under the skin back in those days that's important because i was very fortunate that i didn't have seven thousand dollars as a matter of fact i was frustrated about it i looked around for other opportunities were there any people i could partner with and cut that price down to 3500 so we each own half well fortunately i wasn't able to do that because what i know now and i didn't know then was that airplane had been sitting outside for years the fabric was undoubtedly no good and replacing the fabric on an aircraft can be a very expensive item it may be something you could do yourself with the oversight of an ia but the odds are that's not something a first time buyer wants to get into it's also entirely likely that the steel tubing underneath that fabric had rotted out and would require major repair and that's to say nothing of the fact the engine hadn't turned a blade in years so being stored outside the weather the snow the rain all that i probably got away cheap because i didn't have the seven thousand dollars to buy that airplane now fast forward a number of years and i'm still looking for an airplane i still haven't gotten one i've i've bought the house i've had the kids i've done all that life experience stuff but i still haven't gotten the airplane and then i'm at the airport one day at the fbo and they move a display case and right there on the wall is an ad for a 1963 cessna 150 c model perfect to see it prime builder very inexpensive to operate it's got new plexiglas it's got a new prop the downside hasn't actually flown in five years well i called up the owner and i made arrangements to see the airplane and we had a great chat it turned out he had bought the airplane then bought a house and realized he really couldn't afford to manage both of them but he only said printed up that one flyer and put it on the wall the fbo he didn't let anybody else know just that one flyer and just bad luck somebody moved a display case in front of it and nobody saw that flyer for five years until i just happened to be there the day they moved the display case now because that he had been sitting there for five years waiting and because the engine hadn't turned over there's a pretty good chance there's gonna be some work required there there may be some corrosion in there i made a stupid lowball offer he was asking twenty thousand i offered ten he countered with eleven and we had a deal i took home my first airplane a 1963 cessna 150 c model fastback straight tail actually a great airplane i enjoyed flying a lot i put it into a flying club that i belonged to at the time plenty of people flew it some students soloed in it it's still in a flying flight school out there in the world someplace it's still a great airplane and it will be for years to come i have no doubt now after that 150 i decided i needed a little more space a little more capacity a little longer legs and i did look around and i just stumbled onto a cessna 172 happened to be in the hanger home next door to where a friend of mine lived i was just visiting and we went wandering over and the guy offered me a great price now i had a very high time engine and it had a classic 1977 instrument panel including a lorean and a cassette deck it was pretty old school but it did what i needed it to do and many times when we're shopping for an airplane that's the important part beyond the price and the condition is this plane going to do what you want it to do mission is very important with aircraft if i buy a cessna 150 because i want to take my family from florida to colorado i've made a big mistake because they're not going to fit in there that's going to be a very disappointing experience on the other hand i don't really want to buy a twin engine cessna 310 or a beach 18 if all i really wanted to do was build time so i need to find the airplane that fits about 80 percent of the mission i want to do let's figure out if we're looking for a time builder something we can fly recreationally with friends go for the hundred dollar hamburger are we looking for a tail driver where we can go do back country flying and camp out or do we want something that will do aerobatics we have to figure out what we're really going to do with that airplane not what we're dreaming of what we're actually going to do with that airplane and find that suitable airframe and engine combination keep in mind to this point nobody has developed an airplane that carries a lot of weight flies really high really fast and doesn't burn much fuel everything is a compromise so let's figure out what it is we want take that time to make that decision and then start looking for an airplane in that realm whatever it is that'll be the right one for you now let's talk a little bit about paperwork because there will be paperwork when you buy an aircraft not nearly as much as you think however in fact the faa only requires two pieces of paper and a five dollar fee to register an airplane what you want to get and you can pick this up online you can search for it and print it out yourself form 8050-1 8050-1 that is the faa registration application you can use either the phrase and be cautious by the way there are websites out there that look like they're an faa website and they'll charge you this is a free download you can just have it and print it out print as many copies as you want you'll also need the official bill of sale form 8050 8050-2 now those are the only two documents you're going to need the bill of sale is the seller telling the faa yeah i'm getting rid of this aircraft i'm transferring it to this other person this other entity the registration application is you telling the faa i'm the person that's buying this and it's going to be registered in my name and i'm paying the five dollar fee to make that happen that's all that's required now there's a there's a weird little thing that you might want to consider before you get into that because in all honesty while i've owned this i'm buying my eighth airplane right now uh a 1966 172 g model now that sounds like an old antiquated airplane but it's been upgraded from its original 150 horsepower continental o300 to a lycoming 0360 with 180 horsepower and it only has 18 hours on it it's also got a glass panel this airplane looks nothing like it was when it left the factory so we really have a very wide spectrum of seeing what we've got out there you're going to want to make sure you get that paperwork done after you find the airplane you want as i have and you're going to want to consider the possibility of a buyer's agreement now that's not a requirement you don't have to do it the faa doesn't record it they don't even want you to send it to them but there are times where the buyer and the seller decide they want an agreement about the purchase of this aircraft i did that once with a 182 i bought cessna 182 where the seller wanted a purchase agreement because they were able to list then specifically what instrumentation was in the aircraft what accessories came with the aircraft like a tow bar the condition of the aircraft and even put in there it's sold as is where is which means in this case it was in texas i was in florida i'm going to have to make arrangements to pick that airplane up because they're not going to deliver it that can be in a buyer's agreement and as i said it's totally optional you don't have to do that i've only done it once the other seven airplanes it hasn't been necessary but that's something you may want to consider you may also want to consider working with a local lawyer and or a cpa now that might seem like overkill to you but it also might be smart an aircraft can be a very expensive purchase or it can be very affordable either way you want to think about some other considerations that might leap to mind while you're excited about searching for this phenomenal freedom machine one of those is liability of the eight airplanes well seven airplanes i've owned eight i'm buying i've only owned two in my name the others were all owned in an llc llc means limited liability corporation and it does exactly that it limits the liability you carry for owning that asset let me give you an example if i lend my airplane to someone and they go off and something bad happens america is a litigious place there will probably be lawsuits if i own that aircraft in my name pretty much everything i own is on the line all those people suing me can go after whatever i have however if i own that aircraft in an llc they can only go after the assets of the llc which was the aircraft and the insurance policy they can't come after anything i personally own so you might want to consider that it's very easy to do it's relatively affordable but there may be tax consequences and there may be some things in your state that are a little different than they are in my state so it's worth a little bit of an investment up front to work with a lawyer and a cpa to make sure you've done this correctly one of the other things you'll want to know if you go the llc route when you fill out your registration application for the faa form 8050-1 it will actually ask you if the organization is an american citizen i'm just an individual and i own an llc just as an individual that makes the llc an american citizen you don't want to check the box that says corporation with a voting trust there's there's an extra line in there it can be even though it's a one-page form it can be a little more confusing than you think so don't take this advice lightly if you have the option of working with a lawyer or a cpa to make sure you set up the entity that purchases this airplane correctly go ahead and do that it really can be beneficial so let's take a good look at the the first few steps before we go shopping we want to think about what do we want this airplane to do and shop for an airplane that does that including fitting our budget we want to download and print out form 8050-1 and 8050-2 the faa registration application and the faa bill of sale and we want to have those on hand by the way when you send one set off to the faa make sure you fill out a second set and keep it for your own records that second registration application is your temporary registration until you get the official registration back from the faa and it also means if somewhere down the road the faa kicks that documentation back because you checked the wrong box or forgot to sign something you've got something to refer to and you know what you wrote on the original document that's pretty much the basics besides going ahead and finding a lawyer and you can talk to folks around the airport who do you use who advises you how did you buy your airplane now come back later and we're going to talk about parts two three and four of how to buy an airplane because there's an awful lot to go through here and it's really worth doing so come on back and see me we'll do this in m0a nation keep in mind a good pilot is always learning [Music]

Channel: MzeroA Flight Training

Views: 6,667

Rating: 4.9644971 out of 5

Keywords: MzeroA, MzeroA Nation, MzeroA Flight Training, aviation education, aviation, buying an airplane, airplane, education, how to buy an airplane, Jamie Beckett, AOPA

Id: 5zv68hgEOQE

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021