The Ultimate Guide to Buying an Airplane in 2024 (Full Webinar)

I'm Charlie and I own a Cessna 182 that has completely changed my life and in this video I'm going to show you exactly how to buy your first airplane without wasting a bunch of time or money in the process so that you know where I'm coming from this info is based on my own experience purchasing an airplane but better yet I went back and interviewed my own flying mentors that guided me through this process they've collectively purchased dozens of airplanes themselves but then I also went back and interviewed aviation industry experts from insurance to financing to brokerage and taxs and all kinds of stuff and I used all of those findings to assemble this information so my goal is that this one video might save you weeks or even months of research so let's get started first if you only take one thing away from this video here it is if you are serious about buying an airplane I cannot emphasize enough that you start looking for a hanger right now that might sound counterintuitive hey I don't even have an airplane yet why do I need a hanger but listen The Hanger shortage in the US is really challenging and I've talked to so many people that are ready to buy a plane but they can't just because they can't find a place to keep it so here are some tangible ways to do that first give your local airport a call and ask them about renting a te- hanger and if they don't have any available which they probably won't ask about getting on a wait list and go ahead and put your name down on that you're not committing to anything other than being on the list and even if your name comes up and you already have a different hanger you can just say hey no thanks and they'll happily go to the next person so it's a no-brainer to just start getting on waiting lists next I really suggest joining your local EAA chapter it's the experimental Aviation Association this is going to be an awesome source of local community and a great place to network with other pilots and aircraft owners so once you join and join your Lo local chapter ask them if they know of any hanger is there anyone about to end a lease on a hanger or anyone looking for a hanger mate really just ask around and the EAA is a great way to get started with this and next reach out to all the other airports in your area within a reasonable driving distance and try to get on waiting lists and then you can also reach out to fbos at these airports and ask them about long-term lease options a lot of us are familiar with you know overnight stays and things like that if you're traveling but fbos sometimes will have room for you to be a long-term client now it won't be cheap but some of them have chronic space in their hangers and they can hanger you there until you find a more permanent solution so don't count it out basically there's no magic fix for this other than you just want to put as many lines in the water as you can to try to find a hanger so if you don't even watch the rest of this video take this away you need to start looking for a hanger right now all right so this video is going to intentionally cover a lot of detail but in order to make it really really clear I have a free resource for you it's called the airplane buying road map and you can get it over at airplane academy.com roadmap and it's basically the cliffnotes version of this video and then some it has even more information in it so at the end of this video you might think man there's a lot to do now what the airplane buying road map is going to help just summarize everything I'm saying and give you kind of a an order and a and a methodology almost said mythology that is the wrong word methodology on how to go tackle this there's a rhyme and reason and an order to the way uh that that you do this and the airplane buying road map is just going to help make that really really clear it's totally free airplane academy.com roadmap let's get started so part one of purchasing an airplane is the decision to buy and so first you'll need to make the decision between buying or renting and renting could either mean traditional hourly renting or it could also mean being part of a club or and having part ownership in the aircraft but high level it's a buy or rent decision so I rented on and off for years before ultimately purchasing my own airplane and for a while it totally made sense to rent and then eventually it kind of transitioned where it made a lot more sense for me to actually own the airplane and it came down to three important factors Freedom frequency and finances and I think by asking yourself these same questions I'm about to pose is can help you understand is it better to rent right now or is it the right time to buy so Freedom just means do I have the freedom I'm looking for in aviation if your renting situation makes it hard or impossible to ever take the airplane for a full weekend or for an overnight trip that's kind of what I was experiencing you know that can be really limiting whereas an ownership you end up having all of the freedom you could want because you own the thing and you can fly it when and where you want but some rental and Club scenarios have great access to airplanes and freedom isn't an issue for me eventually I noticed the main time that the airplane was available was just during week nights which is like the least convenient of all cuz everyone everyone wants to fly on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or something like that and so I was watching a lot of sunsets paying by the hour to go watch that Sunset so you end up comparing hm was that picture worth $400 I'm not sure maybe sure and I end up flying to dinner a lot of places basically I just didn't have very much freedom in that situation cuz the airplane just wasn't available all that often so the questions to ask here are do I have the amount of flying Freedom a reasonable amount of Freedom that I would like in a renting situation or am I maxed out and the only way to unlock more freedom is by owning the airplane second is frequency how often are you able to fly and does your rental situation allow you to have the spontaneity that you want I know for me in renting spontaneity was just not in my vocabulary unless it was like a Tuesday night and I did plenty of that but in order to get the airplane on like a Saturday you had to think many Saturdays in advance and so it was hard to fly as frequently as as I wanted cuz I couldn't just be hey the weather looks great what are we doing let's go fly couldn't really do that now when you own frequency gets solved because you have unlimited access to the aircraft it's just it's awesome but if you're in a rental situation where you're flying about as frequently as you want or need maybe your rental situation isn't like mine that's awesome in that case renting can still be a great thing so the questions to ask here are this am I able to fly as much as I realistically want to in renting and for the most part am I able to fly when I want and last is finances now usually the first two freedom and frequency totally favor owning versus renting who wouldn't want to be able to fly when and where they want for as much as they want of course it's the finances that are usually the sticking point usually it's cheaper to rent versus own because you're not paying for all the the direct overhead expenses well I guess you're paying for it indirectly through your rental fee but the point is you're not you literally don't have a hanger uh rental you don't have to pay for the maintenance and the annual and the insurance and all that sort of thing and so while it's not fun to get get a credit card bill uh for the sunset that you just watched from the air and believe me I have plenty of those in my log book just just zoomed into that one flight it's obviously a lot cheaper to rent than it would be to own and pay five figures a year to own the thing but here's the thing if you fly enough your effective hourly rate even if you own own the airplane and you do pay for the hanger and the and the maintenance and the insurance and all the other things that comes with it divided by how many hours you're actually flying it might be cheaper than renting or it might be comparable or it might even just be a little bit more and that's the premium the extra that you're paying for all of the freedom and frequency uh that you could want to the aircraft and so you can't just look at it on H how much was that Sunset to watch you really have to you know keep in mind how many hours are you trying to fly a year how much is that going to cost you in each situation so the questions to ask here are this would owning be similar in price or maybe even less versus renting or is the extra expense of owning worth it for all the freedom and frequency or based on how many hours I want to fly in a year is owning prohibitively expensive versus renting so while I rented I had mediocre access you know freedom and frequency to the aircraft but I just could not afford to own an airplane so I was saving up saving up eventually once I knew that I wanted to fly more and more frequently and I could afford it and it was kind of similar in terms of an hourly basis to own versus rant or even a little bit more I was comfortable with that and so I really opted for owning so ask yourselves the questions that we just covered and if and when you get green lights on all three of these Freedom frequency and finances it's probably time to own so like I mentioned finances is usually the last Domino to fall in the freedom frequency and finances equation so this begs the question how much does it cost to own the airplane so this is the second part of the decision to buy so the costs of owning are made up in two parts you got fixed costs and variable costs fixed costs occur regardless of whether or not you fly it's the hanger the insurance the inspection it's the bills you still get in the mail even if you didn't fly that month which kind of sucks but it's there now variable costs are incurred anytime you fly and pretty much only when you fly it's mainly fuel but there's some other items as well so the more you fly your fixed costs don't change but they're spread out across more flight hours basically brings your effective hourly cost down the more you fly now meanwhile you occur variable expenses every time you start the engine now honestly I think some of us can over fixate on just the purchase price you overemphasize how much airplane can I buy and let me go look at listings that are within that price range and start daydreaming I've done it you you probably done it too but I think we can uh underestimate the ongoing ownership costs of the airplane and factor that into what's our budget for buying so my airplane back in 2016 I got a cesna 182 it was $93,000 which even in 2016 was an awesome deal and it's been a really really great airplane so there not it's not like there was like a ton wrong with it or something I just got a really good deal on it I have spent that and more ever since then owning an operating that airplane and so that really has to be factored in it's not just the purchase price you it's kind of like the saying it's not the horse that'll get you it's that hey I think that's a saying if not it was like one comment one time and I attributed it to being a saying but either way it illustrates the point and you don't want to under undercount it now there are a lot of moving pieces here when it comes to budgeting for an airplane and so to make things easier I put a financial model together in Excel it's actually in Google Sheets but you can download as Excel and you can get it for free if you go to airplane academy.com roadmap like I mentioned earlier you can grab a copy of the airplane buying road map and the financial model will also come along with it using a basic model like this will help you realize the commitment of owning an airplane and actually operating and maintaining it so you get an all-in picture not just the purchase price so for example you could put in some basic assumptions into this model and discover what it would cost you on an annual monthly and even per flight hour basis which will also help you compare it against renting you can obviously make your own but I wanted to save you some time and give you a head start so it's a simple model but I think you like playing around with it so airplane academy.com roadmap and I will send over that model for free right away now a word of caution the main thing I think you want to do here is you start playing around with the numbers is uh not get like right up to your budget like for example if you say yeah I can afford I'm making up numbers but $20,000 per year to fly for Allin don't work the model to where if you do everything perfectly and there are no unforeseen things that happen it's exactly $199,999 I'm a dollar under budget baby don't do that you really want to bake in some buffer and I know that sounds simple but you really don't want to get into the situation where you're tempted to overlook any maintenance items or skimp on maintenance it's just not worth it at all or if you're over budget you could start to Res the airplane or your loved one starts resenting the airplane you don't want to come anywhere close to that Cliff so to speak so if your budget's 20K or whatever the number is try to see if you can work out a model that gets you some percentage and you decide the percentage some percentage under that maybe it's 20% maybe it's 30 40% I don't know but have some wiggle room in case your assumptions are wrong or unforeseen things come up so go use a model like this or make your own either way just do this ahead of time to not overly fixate on just the purchase price you want to think about what are the all-in costs and commitment going to be now this might be a little bit of a circular uh analysis because understanding what your purchase price range um could be is going to really tell you what types of airplanes maybe you could buy they're going to have specific stats when it comes to like fuel burn and different things that you then go put back in the model which then adjusts the numbers and you kind of go in a circle but hopefully you're starting to dial in farther or closer and closer into what type of airplane is going to be right for you which is actually the next step now in terms of what is the quote unquote right airplane it's kind of a flawed question cuz really this is not a right or wrong answer there's no right or wrong airplane but you do need to know that buying an airplane is all about trade-offs so there's no best airplane totally depends on your unique circumstances and more importantly the mission that you need this airplane to accomplish because each airplane has something that it's better at or worse at than other airplanes it's kind of like when you're playing like I play Mario Kart with my nephews and stuff and you're like picking your car they just pick one CU they like the color right but I pick one cuz it's like oh the acceleration is this and the top speed is this and so there's all trade-offs and airplanes are actually kind of similar to that just more complex so the key here is to pick an airplane that's going to work for 80% or more of your missions now to answer that I like to think through what I call the six-point Mission answering these six questions is going to help you understand what type of plane is going to be a good fit for you so the first question is budget what is your budget for both the purchase and more importantly the ongoing operation of this Airport the previous step as we discussed will help determine that knowing your budget range will certainly include and exclude certain types of aircraft so this is a helpful starting point the second question is useful load how much do you routinely that's an important word routinely need to carry between people and stuff now I would venture to say that this is the stat that's probably the most limiting in small airplanes it's usually not that the airplane's too slow or doesn't go far enough or doesn't have enough seats it's usually that it can't carry enough or we can carry people and we can carry stuff and we could go far but we can't actually carry any fuel uh once we put all that stuff in it so I find that the question of useful load is often even more important than range or speed or some of these other things because it's going to impact all of those things and so understanding how much you're probably going to need to carry on an average basis 80% of the time is a really really important question to answer third is the number of seats how many people do you need to carry and remember that just because an airplane has four seats doesn't mean it can realistically carry four people Plus Fuel and bags this is why the useful load question is so important so some airplanes with four seats will realistically carry four people but actually a lot of them just realistically can't fourth is speed how fast do you need to go not not how fast do you want to go but how fast are you actually needing to get there keep in mind airplanes are already usually significantly faster than cars and you're also going direct to your destination not winding through highways that are generally pointed in the right direction and so if you're going 130 knots that's still really fast and so it's easy to think well one airplane goes 130 knots the other one goes 70 knots that's so much faster but unless you're routinely going a really long way that's just not going to add up to a huge time difference and so be realistic when you're asking yourself how fast do I really need to go another thing worth considering on speed is something that good friend and mentor of mine Bob if you're watching thanks Bob uh pointed out he said you know anytime we go on a flying trip as soon as we get there all we talk about is the flying we talk about that flight and previous flights all we're doing is talk about flying so why are we in such a hurry to get there 04 hours faster especially if we're trying to build time in the process so not that that's an excuse just go by the slowest airplane you can find but you're still moving a lot faster than cars so what's the hurry just be realistic when you're asking yourself how fast do I need to go not fast not how fast do I want to go fifth is range and performance how far do you need to go and what kind of performance do you need along the way do you routinely need short field capability or are you doing long trips short trips what are you need in the airplane to do now keep in mind just because an airplane has five or 6 hours of endurance doesn't mean that you or your passengers will and so in my 182 it's got great range but honestly I need a break before the airplane needs a break so uh range isn't isn't to me the end all be all stat for my mission um because I'm going to want to stop along the way anyway so this is again why I think useful load is maybe a more important stat than even range unless you're really in a situation where you got to travel a long ways for business you got to get there quickly and last is equipment how do you need the aircraft equipped you need an IFR capable or VFR only think about what kind of flying you're going to be doing when you are all of these with realistic and not necessarily aspirational assumptions it's going to help you narrow down what kind of airplane you need and then some basic Google searching can help you identify what types of airplanes fulfill that mission to give you an example from my own story just to kind of bring this to life this is what my Sixpoint Mission looked like and i' had only been renting 172 so I didn't totally know what my mission as an owner was going to be but this was my best guess my purchase price I had up to 120k to work with for useful load ideally I wanted the ability to realistically take for people and fuel if needed so 1,000 plus pounds of useful load would be ideal so that I could actually carry Fuel and Light bags on top of people so number of seats I needed at least four now for Speed this wasn't really a deal breaker for me because of all the things I mentioned earlier I was honestly fine with whatever so it's helpful to be flexible in some of these and kind of know okay I this is this is a deal break for me it has to accomplish this but these other things that can be flexible on cuz you might need to be as for range and performance I really wasn't so concerned about range since I assume that if I had a high useful load I'd also have reasonable range too cuz when I didn't have much in the plane I could always carry a lot of fuel now as for performance I wanted the ability to go to Grass strips and experience the back country from time to time so reasonable short field capability was definitely on my list I knew I wouldn't just be landing on 5,000 ft runways all day and as for equipment I knew I wanted an IFR equipped and then on top of that ideally I wanted an autopilot and an HSI you can add those after the fact but if you can find an airplane that already has it sometimes it can be cheaper to just buy it all already equipped so ultimately I selected a Cessna 182 because I figured if it was the first and last airplane I ever bought is the only one I could own it would be able to do a little bit of everything and that is totally held true you know it it doesn't have the most useful load it's not the fastest airplane but honestly it has a pretty respectable stat and all of all of those areas of the Sixpoint Mission it really will do a little bit of everything and so I've just been just over the moon about about a 182 I think it's like if you're questioning What airplane I've never met a 182 owner is like yeah I know 18 to wish I hadn't like everybody's like I love that or the only reason I got out of it is cuz I wanted something smaller or bigger or whatever it wasn't cuz something was wrong with the airplanes just cuz their mission changed so it's been an awesome airplane if you need one I'm biased but it's a great airplane so this is really important once you have an idea of the kind of airplane you want it is really really important to go get familiar with the different models of that airplane's history so for example if you know you want a 182 Don't just go to trade a plane or the different listing websites and say hm this model year always seems to to be within my price range and this model year is not so I guess I'll go with this one I mean that might be what happens but there is a reason that maybe the market says hey this model is going to be a little bit different or this model is a little bit more premium and it doesn't always coincide with age they're changing things or they changeed things across the different models sometimes it was great Improvement sometimes the market would say yeah I know what they were going for but actually the previous generation of that is a lot better so one way you can do this research is by joining one of the associations for that type of airplane so these are sometimes called type clubs or type groups or owner associations so for example in my 182 there's the Cessna Pilots Association and there are several others like it but this one actually has a specific resource where they Deep dive what did Cessna change in all of the 182 models from day one through today and then you can also go into the forums and and and look for what's the chatter or maybe even just make a post and say hey I'm thinking about buying 182 here's my price range this is kind of the models I'm considering can you maybe chime in with anything I should know about these models and then use that to supplement your own research people will chime in you'll find a lot of information about that so you can be more informed and also a quick tip if you're ultimately looking for a broker to help you buy an airplane these owner groups are an awesome resource to find one because you to ask around ask who other people use there might be some Guru in the club that everyone just worships this guy because he's the 182 guy that sort of thing and so uh I joined one of these after I bought my airplane so I'm telling you so hopefully you can join it before you buy the airplane it's just a wealth of knowledge also joining an e AA chapter can be really helpful on this front because they're going to have experience the members in that group will have experience hopefully with the airplane you're looking to buy they might be able to Appo you to a broker that sort of thing so there's a lot of work that you can do before you ever buy the airplane to get really really well informed so once you know what kind of airplane you want to buy now comes the fun part you get to actually look at listings but I have I have an important warning for you here it's that when you're looking through listings it's really easy for emotions to completely take over and for all of your logic to to just go out the window and I can prove that because in my own story uh when we got there to see the airplane I was in love with the listing we flew out to Florida to see it all things were good it's a great airplane I was I was really excited to hopefully buy it uh we got there I noticed I go oh that's that's kind of strange the fairings connecting uh the struts on the wings and and on the uh on the wheels are painted a totally different color than the rest of the airplane they're not white and I don't really like how those look turns out they're pretty expensive to uh to actually change and and I thought man was was there a picture about that did I did they just withhold that and sure enough every single picture of the airplane clear as day you could see these things did not match and I just totally overlooked it because I was overcome with the excitement of like this is it this is the airplane I've been waiting for this my whole life this my dreams are coming true and you can miss stuff like that so if it's easy to miss things as obvious as oh yeah that part of the plane is not even painted remotely close to the rest of the other planee if if if I can miss that then what are the other things that are really easy to miss this and so you really have to try to check your emotions at the door and I didn't do this well but I'm I'm hopefully helping everyone else to remember to do this check your emotions of the door think objectively in particular try to get your uh detective hat on and really search the listings for any red flags so here are some of the things I look for in listings the price the year and the model and like I mentioned different models have different pros and cons things that the manufacturer changed over the course of time so take notice to the model look at the registration is it a us-based aircraft or not look at the pictures and take particular I mean that's obvious look at the pictures but I mean take particular notice to the airplane itself and also its surroundings you can sometimes tell a lot about how an airplane was maybe treated based on the photos look at the quality of the pictures and if they obviously omitted something like the interior or the panel always surprised people don't take high quality pictures and you makes you wonder a little bit about the person selling the airplane and how they treated the airplane think about the location and if it might have been in a human environment that can be more prone to corrosion look at the total time on the airplane look at the engine time and the date of the last overhaul because sometimes engines have a really low amount of hours but they were overhauled like 30 years ago so H do the math that airplane flew like 4 hours a year which is not good for the engine look at the propeller time think about if is it equipped for IFR or VFR only look at the equipment and any modifications that have been made to the airplane also look at its damage history and then importantly well I mean all these are important but don't miss this one look to see if it has complete or lost log books the log books are the aircraft's diary and it's the provable history of what's happened to the airplane and so if the logbooks are lost or incomplete it can significantly impact the market value of the airplane because you can't prove what has or hasn't happened to the airplane so usually when I'm looking through listings I'm looking for red flags the more you do it the more trained your eye will become on spotting things or how do people phrase things that are pretty negative about the airplane but in a creative way and the more you look through listings the more you'll know what I'm talking about there but but this is going to help you understand what's a solid listing versus one that's cool but we need to pass on it as for where to look through these listings there's several large websites like trade a plane controller Barn stormers those are some of the big ones and then there's some newer ones like Wing Swap and some others popping up I I usually go to trade a plane cuz uh there's tons of listings there and I just think it's laid out the the cleanest it's the most pleasing on the eye in my opinion but something worth noting here is that some airplanes will be listed on multiple sites but not all the websites and so they're all worth checking in to make sure there's going to be some duplication across sites but you might find one that oh it's listed on this site but none of the others and you don't want to overlook it now in doing all this research there is one single thing here please listen that that's either going to make this an invaluable resource to you or a gigantic waste of time and that's whether or not you choose to document this research you're doing you're going to be looking through a lot of listings and so you might as well take the extra 60 seconds it's nothing just to write down the things that you are discovering about these airplanes because this will end up turning into a comparable model or a comp model you might recognize that term that's going to be an invaluable resource to you you know just like when you buy a house you might ask your realer hey what are the comps in this neighborhood you're asking what are the comparable data points and your agent says well you know there's a similar three three Bath House in the same neighborhood that's sold for X but it has 200 more square feet but I think it's a good comparable data point it's really not much different here in aviation really the only difference is that we're going off of the asking price and not the final sales price because we don't have that info but it's still a really useful data point so if you're just looking at listings and it's just a Daydream session that's really fun but it's also not very productive and so take the extra few seconds to write down some of this research I'll show you how in just a second um and it's going to really uh build up your knowledge base as to what is a fair deal or a really good deal or maybe a deal it's like hey that's crazy I don't want to I don't want to pursue that one it's going to help you understand all these Trends so the way that I do this is I build an Excel model or Google Sheets or whatever you use but just use a spreadsheet and put these parameters in it put a link to the listing so you can find it later sometimes they they expire after a while but it's still helpful to write down write down the tail number the year the model the asking price total time of the airplane the engine time propeller time next put the exterior in the paint and for this one this starts to get a little subjective cuz what do you write down for paint I like to use a one to three grade uh one can be the best or the worst three can be the best or the worst doesn't matter as long as you're consistent with it basically we're just trying to take something that's subjective and turn it into something that has a numerical data point um that you can compare it one versus the other so you'll do this similarly for the other things I'm about to mention like the interior 1 to three grade avionics one to three grade upgrades or modifications one to three grade and then finally complete log books this is a yes or no question or a zero or one however you want to do it and then damage history yes or no so if you take the time to do this simple step I promise it's going to make a massive difference in your research it's also pretty fun I mean it takes something that would otherwise just be a Daydream session and actually makes it really productive at the same time so it's a win-win it's it's really going to help you in the buying process so while you're having fun looking at listings there's some other things you want to do in the background to get your ducks in a row that way if and when you do find a listing that you seriously want to pursue you're in position to do so if you've ever bought a house you know as soon as you find one you like like you got to move fast and it can move fast so you want to be prepared to do so so here are some of the things you want to do first is to get your pre-approval for financing if if this is applicable to you so similar to what you do on a house it's helpful to have your pre-approval letter uh for up to a certain purchase price before before you actually make an offer second you want to contact your Aviation insurance agent and make sure they're aware of your intentions and while you won't know the exact airplane yet obviously it would be really smart to get their input on your ability to be insured in that kind of airplane first so generally knowing hey I want to buy a 182 is is enough to get them in the right direction you don't want to buy a plane and then figure out how to get insurance on it that sounds obvious but it's easy to overlook so you can start these conversations with insurance agents even while you're looking third ideally you want to know who's going to to do your pre- buby inspection uh before you even find the airplane so that way they're ready to mobilize once you find the airplane now if you already know what airport you're going to be based at again ideal to already have a hanger the mechanic on the field and most Fields have some mechanic on the field that would be a good place to start and ask them if they do pre- buys now alternatively you can join your local EAA chapter and ask around for mechanic ask everyone else hey who do you use who do you like see if they do pre-bi and then also you can join an association for the kind of airplane you're wanting to buy like we talked about and ask in those forums that might help uncover some recommendations on people you can use that are skilled in that particular aircraft uh you you know you'll you will need to pay for their time and travel to do this inspection but it is worth the cost now a word of caution here don't have the sell's mechanic or the person who's been doing all the maintenance on the airplane over the years do the pre- purchase inspection or let them say hey it just came out of annual last week we'll give you that report and there's your pre- buby you really want to be able to hire and an objective third party to go analyze the airplane um because it's it's going to be easy for the mechanic that's been doing all the work to have a glowing review of their own work and not that they're not trustworthy but you just want to be able to have a neutral third party doing this inspection fourth you want to make your bank aware that if and when you do go under contract for a plane you're going to be putting a deposit into an escrow account so you'll want to be knowledgeable with how to make a wire at at your particular banking institution some are more intuitive than others so that way there won't be delays when it comes time you also want to know the wire cut off deadlines and who you should contact to make that happen uh there might they might have fraud prevention steps for you to go through first and you just want to know how all that's going to work so that way there aren't delays when you actually need to send the money you don't want the time that you're supposed to wire the money to be the first time you're calling the bank saying hey buy an airplane how do I send a money that sounds obvious it's easier to overlook and fifth as stressed at the beginning of the video if you are serious about getting an airplane please start looking for a hanger right now or at least know which FBO might be able to take you on on as a long-term client if needed you want to have a place for the airplane to go once you buy it so having your ducks in a row on these items is going to help you move expeditiously once you find a listing that's worth pursuing and if you've documented your research along the way it'll help you know if you have a listing that's worth strongly pursuing in the first place so once you find a listing that you want to pursue typically you'll get on the phone with a selling agent to talk to them about the airplane and um and then hopefully try to get them to hold it for you while you can come out and look at it and most Brokers will honor their word of not selling it for money under you it's kind of a first come first serve thing if you can get out there reasonably quick and so in addition to seeing the airplane and flying it the other big item to check off is the pre- purchase inspection also called the pre- buby the pre- buby is usually similar to an annual inspection where they inspect the whole aircraft minus overly invasive things like disassembling the crank case they're not going to do that airworthiness issues that come up those are typically the sell's responsibility to fix depending in neg negotiation but usually that's on the seller and then cosmetic issues are typically the buyer's respons responsibility to fix if they want to sometimes overlooked in the pre- purchase inspection is conducting a complete log book overview looking through every single page of of the log books and assessing the engine the propeller and the airframe log books side by side to understand the full history of the aircraft sometimes they'll they'll upload this digitally so while you're waiting to get out there maybe you're going to go out there in a few days you can review this in the meantime to speed things up but you definitely want to review these uh and that can also include reviewing the aircraft's stc's or supplemental type certificat get 337s and any other fa filings that show certain repairs or alterations have been done to the aircraft and you can compare those to the logbook entries now that might sound intimidating but your mechanic Andor your buying agent should be able to help with this diligence and just remember don't have the sellers mechanic do this inspection for you try to get a neutral third party to help you out based on what you find out in the pre-bi you might want to renegotiate the deal a little bit or just go with it or maybe even walk away if you've ever bought a house before you you know this once you uh go through the inspection you have to make a decision and there's no right or wrong decision it's hey do we want to negotiate this do we want to press forward do we want to walk away something in between it's kind of the art of the deal so to speak but my advice to you is to not get emotionally committed to this airplane there are many other airplanes out there if you don't feel good about this one or there's enough red flag starting to add up don't be afraid to walk away you will save yourself a lot of money just flying home on an airliner even though you you you had to pay for that expense that'll be way less than buying the wrong airplane or one with tons of issues uh that you're going to have to pay for I promise so don't get emotionally wrapped up and committed to buying the airplane uh just stay logical about it so once all the pre- buide diligence has been completed on the aircraft and the buyer and the seller both agree to the sale the actual process of purchasing the airplane and the paperwork stuff it's actually pretty simple so here are the main things that happen first is the money and the title to the airplane money is usually wired to an escrow agent if one is being used and for parties that don't know each other this is highly recommended for the safety of the purchase the agent will wire the money to the seller and deliver the aircraft's title to the buyer it's very similar really just like buying a house you don't wire the money directly to the seller and hope they simultaneously hand you the keys to the house and the title no you work with a neutral third party the escrow agent that the title company to handle the transaction so that way there's no breach of trust everything gets done correctly at the right time second is the paperwork an asset purchase agreement is signed and a bill of sale which is basically a fancy receipt is also created that simply states that the aircraft was purchased from one party by another and finally is the registration the bill of sale remember the fancy receipt and the change of registration form those are both sent to the fa along with a $5 processing fee and that's pretty much it for basic piston aircraft now on Jets and things they it can be more complicated with parts programs and engine programs and some different things that have to to get solved but for basic air airplanes it's really simple it's some money it's a little bit of paperwork in a registration form and $5 to the fa and you're Off to the Races once once you own the plane and you're in charge of maintaining it honestly can be kind of overwhelming at first because compared to when you rented or just you were in the flight school and you dropped the keys off like your responsibility was done and you didn't have to think about it once you own the airplane there's a lot more to think about and so um it can be overwhelming at first I have found it to be pretty digestible and not that hard to keep up with once I realize that all of your maintenance kind of falls into a few key categories your annual inspection is the big one that's probably the most expensive maintenance event you'll hopefully have in the year second is intervals as required by equipment so for example if your airplane is IFR certified then every 24 months you're going to need your pedo static check but typically your mechanic can kind of time these to happen at or around your an annual and batch a lot of this together so that way you're not doing a bunch of one-off inspections at random times of the year next are oil changes now for me there's a little bit of a surprise because I change the oil in my plane a lot more than I do in my car CU I don't drive that many miles on my car every year so a lot of times it's every 50 engine hours or 6 months whichever comes first so you'll just want to keep track of this and plan ahead on oil changes so that way you're not due for an oil change right at the same moment you're planning a trip that might have 10 or 20 hours of flying the airplane on it uh it's not hard to track you'll get used to it next are airworthiness directives or ads and service bulletins now airworthiness directives are quote legally enforcable regulations issued by the FAA in accordance with 14 CFR part 39 to correct an unsafe condition in a product that's a big deal part 39 defines a product as an aircraft engine propeller or Appliance so it could almost be anything it's kind of like getting a recall notice in the mail that says by the way your car airbags don't work um so we're going to need you to fix that and so I'm being funny but it it is kind of like that but the the good thing is it doesn't always apply like you might still get it in the mail but your serial number for the aircraft or whatever part the ad applies to you might not actually have one in your airplane that's within that serial number range or even if you do it might be hey we this needs to be addressed or it might just be it needs to be inspected immediately or comply with it at the next annual you're have to read it and work with your mechanic to understand how to comp apply with it but just cuz you get one in the mail doesn't mean oh man there goes a few grand it could it definitely could but it doesn't always mean that so don't lose sleep over it the other thing about ads is that if you have one that pertains to your aircraft might be something that you have to uh keep up with on an ongoing basis for example in my cesna 182 there's an ad on the seat rails and I've had to replace both my seat rails over the course of time for this they're worried that if the holes that the seat locks into when you slide it forward and backwards those get at all damaged there's a risk of the seat you know just free flowing forwards or backwards and it happens during takeoff you can slide all the way back it could be a really bad deal and so that's one of the things on the list that I I have to comply with and I've had to replace those parts uh more than once over the last seven years and such so um I want to say 80s are annoying but you obviously want to know about them like if there's a legit safety uh issue or could be an issue on your airplane you want to know about it and this is why you want to have some buffer in your financial model because you don't know if something like this is going to happen all of a sudden you're have to comply with it once or ongoing or that sort of thing so don't be worried about it but they do come up similar but different to ads are service bulletins these are issued by manufacturers about critical and useful information on safety maintenance and product Improvement now the FAA says that compliance with service bulletins may or may not be mandatory but they should not be ignored and then finally is ad hoc maintenance you know oh no the front strut is flat might need more nitrogen or a new seal or something it's unplanned things that arise as part of normal wear and tear on the airplane now you'll get into Rhythm you'll get used to this it doesn't have to be super intimidating it's just an adjustment cuz now you're not just the pilot you're also the pilot and you're responsible for maintaining the airplane a small regret I have on maintenance is that I didn't read the book engines by Mike Bush sooner in my ownership Journey he is one of the industry's leading experts I mean maybe the expert on piston aircraft maintenance and his book has so many insights that are understandable even by the non-engineer like me he has a lot of practical advice and information in there about owning and maintaining an airplane that the flight school is just not going to teach you because it's not it's not necessarily their job to teach that to you and so I wish that I would have read this from day one there's so much practical knowledge in there about how your engine works past what you they teach you in in flight school and what are some of the issues and errors that can arise over the course of time in your particular engine and that sort of thing so it is very very much worth investing in one of the many practical takeaways I got out of that book was the importance of doing an oil analysis at every single oil change it's not expensive but it's really really insightful the oil analysis gives you Trend data on how much metal is being found in the oil at the microscopic level and based on what type of metal that is it tells you what part of the engine it might have come from and helps you be able it's basically an early diagnostic tool to see the health of your engine because usually airplane engines don't just quit out of nowhere there's usually some signs and symptoms along the way if we're willing to look for it unless you just starve the engine of fuel but as far as like maintenance and wear and tear and things the oil analysis is really revealing and help you get a head start on the health of your engine next remember that any maintenance that's performed on the aircraft will always generate log book entries these need to be added into your aircraft log books and kept in a safe place and remember losing these log books can significantly impact the market value of your airplane so treat these log books like they're worth a ton because they are worth a ton I usually keep them locked up in the safe unless I'm adding to the log books or I'm taking the airplane annual other than that they're always kept in a safe place you can also digitize your log books by taking pictures of them anytime there's new entries and upload it into the cloud or there's also some really cool upand cominging services like plane Logics and others that will not only digitize your log books and put them into an organized format but then also remind you of upcoming intervals and and other things the point is you just want to treat your log books really intentionally don't just throw them in the basement or the back of your car and forget about them they're worth a lot they're really important so you want to treat them like it I think one of the challenging things about buying an airplane is that unless you have someone knowledgeable to guide you through the process many of us are just forced to consult the Google search bar which can kind of be a scary place to just aggregate random pieces of information from online if you don't know what you don't know it's hard to even know what to search for and the things you find may or may not even be that helpful and so I really believe that you need a guide walking you through this process there's just a lot at stake it's a really really big process I was really really fortunate to have Aviation mentors that guided me through the process based on their experience of buying dozens of airplanes themselves so after I bought my airplane I went back and and talked with them I not only talked with them but I interviewed them I got on camera to kind of relive the process relive all the advice that they gave me and then also document all the things that I've learned through the buying process and the airplane ownership process since 2016 and then I went a step further and I contacted a bunch of aviation industry experts from brokerage to maintenance to personal finance to tax and Aviation insurance and more and I just asked them all the questions that I had when I was buying an airplane and I think other people would have as well and it took months and months to aggregate all this edit it put it all together but I did because I want more people to be able to become airplane owners CU it's totally changed my life and I believe it can change yours and that resource that came together is called the airplane buying system so for those of you that are looking for more help and guidance on airplane buying the airplane buying system is truly an awesome and robust resource that I really want you to know about it's 30 plus videos that cover every single step of the buying process in detail so that you can save money and save time that's my goal and I really believe it'll help you learn about a year of research in only 9 hours of the course I really promise that is this is going to be far cheaper and more efficient then Googling around and looking for advice it really will save you time and money and and it also comes with an entire one-year refund policy so you could go through the course if you want a refund of course I'm going to give you a refund you online courses pretty much never have a refund policy but I do and it lasts an entire year I've tried to price it as affordably as I can but I also want to let you know that if you get the free airplane buying road map at airplane academy.com roadmap I'm also going to send you info as to how you can get the airplane buying system at a reduced price price so you can learn more about the airplane buying system at airplane academy.com just keep in mind that the price you see on the page I'm going to give you a way to get that at a discounted rate so next steps are really simple coming out of this video go grab the airplane buying road map it's totally free airplane academy.com roadmap and I'll send you more info as to how to get the airplane buying system at a reduced price you can respond to any of those emails and they come directly to me they don't go to anybody else and I'd be glad to help you out I'm rooting for you and I can't wait for you to own an airplane [Music]

Channel: Airplane Academy

Views: 37,731

Keywords: buy a cessna 182, buy a cessna, buy an airplane, how to buy an airplane, buy a cessna 172, buy a cessna 206, cessna, how to buy a cirrus

Id: oIgX89kf6r4

Length: 41min 40sec (2500 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024