The pre-purchase inspection is a critical step that helps you make an informed buying decision. An airplane prebuy ensures your success as a buyer by determining an aircraft’s overall history and condition as well as uncovering defects and surprises that affect the value proposition. We perform hundreds of prebuys every year for our clients nationwide.
Get Started--> Pre-Purchase Inspection Contact FormYou’ve made the decision to buy an aircraft. Now what? Before you make an offer, enlist the help of a knowledgeable and experienced prebuy expert. Your dream aircraft may have a few skeletons in the closet that you’ll want to know about before signing the dotted line.
According to aviation attorney J. Scott Hamilton, the biggest reason for litigation in an aircraft transaction is neglecting to perform an adequate pre-purchase inspection. Once you sign the dotted line, all the aircraft’s issues and discrepancies become your problem, along with the legal responsibility to maintain airworthiness. Avweb.com reports the average age of the General and Business Aviation fleet is 40 years old, making a comprehensive prebuy more important than ever. While some sellers may deter you from preforming a prebuy, it is your right as a buyer, and should be part of your purchase agreement. Neglecting to get a prebuy is like playing a potentially deadly game Russian Roulette. Are you willing to bet your wallet and your safety on an airplane you know absolutely nothing about?
The purpose of a prebuy is to help you determine the actual condition of a prospective aircraft; verify the aircraft’s airworthiness and maintenance status, and uncover defects that could impact the aircraft’s value, safety of flight, or cost of ownership. Getting a thorough prebuy will help you uncover surprises early, negotiate the final sales terms, and ensure a successful transaction. Simply put, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into before you commit to buying the airplane. The only opportunity you have to get free maintenance on an airplane is before you buy it!
Despite the regulations governing pilots, aircraft operations, and maintenance, there are no regulations whatsoever governing aircraft transactions. This lack of accountability and oversight leaves a number of opportunities for things to go wrong. The number one cause for litigation in aircraft transactions in not performing an independent pre-purchase inspection from a trusted, third-party mechanic.
A pre-purchase inspection, also known as a prebuy, serves to assist a prospective buyer in making an informed buying decision. Similar to a home inspection, a prebuy will help you discover any issues before committing to the purchase. A prebuy inspection quickly determines the condition of the airplane as well as its true value by uncovering defects, paperwork discrepancies, maintenance issues, and airworthiness concerns that could make the airplane unsafe, illegal, or too costly to buy. In other words, a prebuy is cheap insurance that protects you from a bad deal.
The prebuy also serves to represent the buyer and their interest during the purchase process to assist in the final negotiations and closing terms. Performing a prebuy is not only your right as an airplane buyer, but also your responsibility. Remember, once you purchase an airplane, all of its issues, defects, and discrepancies become your problem and the FAA holds you legally accountable.
The prebuy is simply meant to ensure the airplane’s condition is as represented in the listing. Contrary to popular belief, the objective of the prebuy inspection is not to kill an airplane deal, rather to make the deal better. The prebuy can help you negotiate the final sales terms or lower the price as well as have specific maintenance items fixed before taking delivery of your new airplane.
While a prebuy is often referred to as an inspection, a prebuy is really an investigation on an airplane. The term inspection is defined by the FAA and governed under FAR §91.409. Interestingly, a prebuy is not recognized by the FAA as an inspection; they provide absolutely no description, guidance, or oversight of a prebuy. Likewise, aircraft manufacturers make no mention of prebuy evaluations in their maintenance manuals or service documents. Therefore, a prebuy is not regulated in any way and has no set standards. That is, until now. We are raising the bar and setting the standard for what a pre-purchase evaluation is and what it should include.
The lack of regulation and guidelines for a prebuy may leave you wondering what a prebuy should include. Some mechanics simply do a brief “visual examination” of the aircraft looking for obvious signs of damage or defects while others would rather perform a scheduled inspection such as an annual inspection or phase inspection. In fact, many shops and mechanics do not perform prebuys for liability and insurance purposes. We treat our prebuys as an investigation. Every airplane has a different story to tell and it’s our job to uncover the facts—from the aircraft’s ownership and maintenance history to its structural, mechanical, and cosmetic integrity, all the way to its flight performance and systems health—we leave no stone unturned.
As a pilot you’re probably familiar with the term Pilot-in-Command, but what about Buyer-in-Command? If you want to take control of the purchase process, you must start with a detailed prebuy. When you enlist Airplane Intel, we strictly work on your behalf and act as your your eyes and ears during the purchase process. We will help coordinate the prebuy, flight test, and other logistics with the seller. We will travel to the airplane’s home airport or maintenance base so there is no need to have the airplane relocated or flown to a different airport. If you choose, you, your mechanic, and/or flight instructor can attend the prebuy to get a first-hand look at the aircraft.
We will keep you informed during each phase of the prebuy process. Upon completion, we will present you with a detailed written report, complete with photos and video, summarizing our findings along with a list of squawks, an estimated cost of repairing/correcting known discrepancies, and a list of our recommendations. The results of the prebuy will help you determine whether you want to move forward with the purchase of the airplane. In many cases, the seller will agree to correct major defects at their expense or agree to renegotiate the sales price or closing terms.
Nationwide, there are only a handful of maintenance shops and mechanics willing to perform prebuy inspections on used aircraft. In fact, many mechanics do not do prebuys for liability and insurance reasons. Thus, they lack the experience and insight to know how defects impact aircraft value, cost of ownership, and whether the airplane is a good buy.
There is absolutely no guidance whatsoever from the FAA or aircraft manufacturers as to what a pre-purchase inspection should encompass. Therefore, there is no set standard for a prebuy and many mechanics have different views on how to perform a prebuy. Some mechanics simply perform a “visual” examination while others perform a scheduled inspection. Both options barely scratch the surface of the aircraft’s actual condition and overall pedigree. Additionally, neither option includes a flight test on the aircraft which assesses engine performance, systems health, and avionics functionality—big ticket, high dollar items.
Ideally, the prebuy is performed by a mechanic or shop that is completely independent of the aircraft’s owner, broker, and maintenance facility. This presents a challenge to the buyer because it typically means the aircraft has to be flown to a different airport at the buyer’s expense. In addition, if something should break during the ferry flight or the airplane is deemed unairworthy by the outside shop, the buyer could be held liable for repair costs and damages, even if you decide to walk away from the airplane. Truth be told, many shops write illegitimate squawks on airplanes just to make extra money—after all, they are in the business of aircraft maintenance .
Some companies claim to be a prebuy service, when in reality they simply “manage” the prebuy. In other words, they subcontract the prebuy to an outside shop and act as the middleman between the buyer and the shop. The company managing the prebuy is not liable for the shop’s work and you don’t have direct communication with the shop. Moreover, you end up paying for the prebuy twice—first to the company managing the prebuy and then again to the shop itself. Why pay twice for a middleman when you can have one company handle everything?
We specialize in performing prebuys on aircraft nationwide. In fact, it is our core business. We have the experience, tools, and resources to perform a thorough, comprehensive, and unbiased prebuy evaluation with our proven, three-phase process. We know how defects influence aircraft value as well as cost of ownership, and can help with final negotiations. We are licensed and insured to provide adequate protection against lawsuits and litigation. We travel to the airplane so it does not have to be flown to another airport saving you the liability, headache, and expense of relocating the airplane.
We do not outsource the prebuy to a third-party shop. We perform the prebuy ourselves as licensed mechanics, inspectors, and pilots. You will have direct communication with our team and always remain in the loop regarding the status of the airplane. We customize our prebuy evaluations based on the aircraft make and model as well as its maintenance and operational history. We also perform a flight test on the aircraft with an experienced pilot covered under the owner’s insurance to check the fitness of the engine(s), systems, and avionics.
What you get by working with us:
In other words, we have the experience and expertise to perform a quality, independent pre-purchase inspection on your selected aircraft making the acquisition process quick, easy, and stress-free. In 2021 alone, we performed $22 Million in aircraft acquisitions and helped our clients save $1,101,993. We have the prebuy process down to a science. We’ve helped our clients save thousands of dollars off the asking price with our proven methods and strategies. We know how the aircraft’s value changes based on its history, current condition, and maintenance status. On average, our clients save 5% or more off the asking price—that’s a savings of tens of thousands of dollars! The money saved by our clients is often up to five times the cost of hiring us!
If you need assistance finding a suitable airplane or narrowing down candidate airplanes, our Buyer’s Assistance Program is a good place to start. If you already have an airplane selected and you’re ready for a prebuy, we can begin the prebuy process. We recommend signing a purchase agreement and making a refundable escrow deposit so the airplane does not get sold while you’re performing your due diligence. We also recommend performing a desktop valuation to determine a good asking price. (Yes, we can help with those steps, too!)
We take a step-by-step, pay as you go approach. The objective is to learn as much about the airplane as possible, as quickly as possible, before you invest a lot of time or money to see the airplane in person. Every airplane has a different story to tell and it’s our job to uncover the facts—from the aircraft’s ownership and maintenance history to its structural, mechanical, and cosmetic integrity, all the way to its flight performance and systems health—we leave no stone unturned. We can also help coordinate logistics such as getting copies of the logbooks, ordering FAA records and title search, scheduling the date to see the airplane, and handling travel plans.
We breakdown the Prebuy into three separate, yet equally important steps:
