Have only bought three types, luckily none came with surprises and delivered on their mission. I think the main expertise is developing a good working relationship with your maintenance team. Have also been lucky on this, and have switched maintenance only once, early on, because they did not appear to be up to standard – so quality not economics.
Not by design I have owned Mr Piper’s aircraft and my experience on parts availability, and your average engineer’s knowledge of the type, has been good. With hindsight have become a believer in KISS, and would prefer to burn Avgas over an RG. The all rounder 182 is hard to beat.
Maintenance on specialist types/complex tends to command a premium, and I would follow the adage of renting over owning, unless you/co-owners are flying at least 150 hours p.a. on the aircraft.
I’ve studied the methods of a few guys in the UK/Ireland who have each bought 100+ aeroplanes in their time. They are all excellent at striking up a rapport with people. So much so that you would actually want to sell them your aeroplane regardless of the price offered. Work on the relationships. I bought a plane off a guy last week for half of what he paid for it three months ago, and he would still do business with me again. He left his GPS, headsets and flying gear in the plane and gave me the keys. I’ve kept all that for him. Next time I see him he’ll get all back.
Without a doubt, if you are buying a house and there are several other buyers offering the same price, the buyer who seems nicest to the seller (and, particularly to the wife, looks like he will look after the house well) is most likely to get his offer accepted.
The problem which I hear about, really persistently, is that many sellers are either illiterate or simply don’t attach any importance to communications (even when selling a 6 figure item) and it is hard to get info out of them before travelling to see the plane for real. As a result, loads of people have travelled long distances to see something which is basically for sale by a very unwilling seller. You get a lot of this. There may not be anything actually wrong with the plane…
Another thing is that a lot of people selling their plane are really happy to get rid of it. Usually the reason for sale is something big. It could be a personal change of circumstances, or there is something wrong with it, or just poor reliability / persistent issues with getting it serviced.
What do the panel think?
Obviously a guy who has bought dozens of aircraft knows more about buying aircraft than the guy who has bought 3.
I think you are confusing buying and obtaining something that will satisfy your needs. There is no need to buy the latter for instance. Two different and hardly even related things.
I think there is a big difference if you buy your plane for yourself or if you are in counceling prospective buyers. The skills and knowledge required are quite different, even though a large extent is the same from another perspective.
Someone who buys lots of planes and resells them may well become an expert in the PROCESS of buying and selling, more than someone who has successfully bought THE airplane for himself. But that does not make him an expert in choosing airplanes, neither for him nor for others.
So if I am looking for a guy to help me choose and verify (up to prebuy) then I’d go with someone like Timothy or, if I may say so, myself who also has been in the trade for a bit.
If I want someone who can help me to do the actual transaction, I can take someone who knows how to do transfers hasslefree and not too expensive rather than learning everything myself.
Myself I am more one of those buyers Timothy describes himself as: I am looking for the right plane for me, my financial means and the job I have at hand for this plane. consequently I am also trying to apply this when someone else tells me to do it for him.
The best husband isn’t the one who has had most wives.
Not the best comparison. You may sell an airplane and, most of the times, get money for that.
Try that with an Ex …
So, for what is it good to know how to buy an aircraft? I am more interested in how to maintain an aircraft. If somebody tells me hesheit bought soo many of them, I wonder why the heck they were not kept? Were they sold because upon trying to fix’em revealed how bad they were? Per se, numbers don’t count for reputation here – my2cents.
Timothy wrote:
The best husband isn’t the one who has had most wives
That made me chortle.
And I agree about the aeroplanes too.
Keeping romance out of the equation helps in buying aircraft, get a good practical example at an attractive price – you may have to kiss a few frogs doing so, but if sentimentality is out of the picture you are likely to have made a better decision.
RobertL18C wrote:
Keeping romance out of the equation helps in buying aircraft, get a good practical example at an attractive price – you may have to kiss a few frogs doing so, but if sentimentality is out of the picture you are likely to have made a better decision.
Yep. And while I am glad to hear @JohnR found buying without inspection worked out, that is pure luck and not a great approach to be honest.
A more relevant figure might be the number of aircraft someone has not had inspected because an initial examination by a non-mechanic enabled them to be ruled out.
I once went to a sealed-bid auction like that, but still found enough suspicious items to NOT even low bid on any of the 7? aircraft.
Nobody seems to have mentioned buying a new plane, from a dealer 
In 2001/2002:
Me: “Can you install a DME and ADF?”
Diamond dealer: “No, only installed kit is available”
Cirrus dealer: “GPS is much better than DME or ADF” and walks off to talk to somebody else
Socata dealer: “Yes, we can, in fact it is already installed as standard in the TB20GT”
Guess who got my money, and the subsequent publicity ? If they had not stop making SEPs I would have “sold” loads of TBs over the next 15 years. I also know I almost certainly “sold” a number of TBMs with this.
You have to use your instinct. I know the above, especially the Cirrus response, was, ahem, unmistakable, but a 5 year old can tell if somebody is taking the p1ss. But as we get older (I won’t use the term “grow up” because that is sooo boring; one should never do that ) we lose that instinct. It is still there, deep down, but it gets overridden by higher level “judgement” stuff. Many of us would have never married those we divorced, if we followed the basics…
The problem with used planes for sale is that a lot of the sellers are purely and simply taking the p1ss. Some appear so because they are virtually illiterate. Some just do it because they don’t give a toss; they run their whole life like that… fumbling and stumbling from one crisis to the next. It is hard to buy those planes, because unless you do a 100% prebuy and some work to crosscheck the logbooks, you have little idea of what you are getting. Then come the horror stories… And if you discount your offer to take out the risks, you won’t get the plane. Yet that would have been the right outcome.
