7 Things You Should Know BEFORE Buying an Airplane! 

Told my wife if we win the lottery I’ll buy a plane. Then when she wins the lottery we could cover the cost to own and maintain it.

This guy makes his living selling time on his airplanes. HmmmK? I got my PPL by purchasing a C150, and it was far and away the best thing i did !! I highly recommend this. after getting signed off to solo, i flew everyday, and practiced every landing type... i passed my checkride with ease, then sold the plane for the same as i paid.

Your explanation of how a sitting engine dies is well said!!! 100% accurate

This is awesome and eye opening guys. Great discussion!

Great conversation! Thanks for all the info. A lot of this I've never heard!

I appreciate you all SO MUCH. This is such a helpful video for those of us who are so overwhelmed by aviation. You do such a great job of making it digestible!

When I purchased the piper arrow we agreed to take the plane within 100 nautical miles to the airport of our choosing to have the pre-buy done. The broker that was selling the plane actually helped us negotiate this. I do not think it is that uncommon to fly a plane within 100 nautical miles or so to the destination you wish do the pre-bye if you have money in escrow and a pre-purchase agreement signed stating that if the pre-buy is successful, you will immediately purchase the aircraft or pay to have it ferried back to the seller. We also negotiated that because the seller claims that the aircraft was 100% airworthy at the time of sale that the seller would cover any airworthiness items discovered during the pre buy. This one is controversial but in my opinion, if the seller is claiming 100% that there is nothing wrong with the airplane and it is within annual and airworthy then they should be willing to back that claim up. I’ve heard horror stories of people buying an airplane that just had a “fresh annual” and getting it back and it being a disaster and barely airworthy and now they’re stuck with this airplane.

This was such a great, informative episode. I am considering purchasing and this is spot on, learned a lot!

I don't fly any longer but starting to experiment with some sim flying. Great video cast covered some great information that I can vouch is 100 percent spot on!

I’ve learned so much from this video. Thank you both.

I only now watched this video and it's so informative. Almost sorry to see it end as it only seem to scratch the surface of more that just aircraft purchase knowledge. I will search for any follow-ups. Great vid. (Barbados)

Fantastic content. Looking forward to the ADs episode.

Thanks! This is beyond helpful!!!

Awesome points these guys are making! The local aircraft owner who is also an Aircraft Inspector told me "If you do not fly more than 100 hours per year, your best bet is to rent". That advice plus these videos will have me as a renter until I can prove to myself that I'll fly more than 100 hours per year. Still waiting for my PPL checkride, had to reschedule a couple of times for weather reasons. Great advice you two!!!

What an amazing wealth of information! Personally, I plan on purchasing a plane to train and build hours on in a few years. I'm spending the leading time up to resuming training doing all the research and saving as I can.

Awesome info. Thnx

This makes owning a plane again with current market/costs seem like a financial and logistic headache for recreational use. I owned a 182P with two partners during the six years pre-pandemic - I now understand how great a deal I had back then.

Solid content 💥

First, decide why you are really buying a plane. Then really figure out how much flying you are going to do. Owning may not be logical since there are ownership costs involved.

would you know a source that had a comparative table of many common engines with overhaul cost estimates? (ideally from the same shop, for an apple-to-apple comparison). Could be useful to know this major cost expectation when looking at a particular airplane.

I respect this channel

Another hangar problem first is getting a hangar without an airplane. Most airports won't even let you in without a fully registered plane first! ☹️

A leakdown teast will test the heads and valves a compression test will test the puston rings in a way

Great video! I'm buying my first plane and haven't finalized the sale yet, so I was eager to see this. Thankfully I've done all the recommended things. The log books are all there, all the ADs are complete, and the pre-buy came back with a few things... and the seller has agreed to take care of them without me even asking. They're also going to do a fresh annual even though it's good til October. It's an aviation maintenance shop so I imagine they want to keep their reputation intact.

Excellent video. How true is it that rotax engines (912) aren’t as prone to corrosion than a GA engine, say a lycoming or contnentsl engine?

Good info, I now know that I will never want to buy a plane. I WAS thinking about buying a Cessna 15 0 and now I am having serious second thoughts.

love the video . how do we tell if its rnav ?

Light aircraft: as a rule of thumb one must deduct $3000.00 from the purchase price for each whole month that it has not flown.

On the topic of logbooks, if they are missing, is there some regulation involved? Is there some additional steps needed for the FAA to consider the plane airworthy?

Are u guys saying the engine usually must replaced or just completely overhauled at 2000 hours. You seemed to use both of those terms when discussing the longevity issue. Thx!

Blue River FTW!

Well that made me sick to my stomach. I’ve been pretty excited about getting my ppl and buying a c170b for outback trips and camping. I now feel like quitting and giving up my dream. It doesn’t feel it in arms length for me much anymore. 😢

I have spotted Buc-ee’s fan! 😅

1:42 I think the counter-point to that suggestion is, when was the last time you did a run-up on your car? There isn't a minimum required equipment list for a car. You don't hop in and think, "Well the fuel gauge isn't working, so I can't drive it." That just doesn't happen. There are no shortage of people driving cars that are in such a state of disrepair that the wheels are practically falling off. Conversely, the average age of a GA aircraft is 30 years! How many 30 year old cars are even running, let alone 40+ years? So I disagree, I think GA aircraft are amazingly reliable when you take all of that into consideration.

I followed all of these recommendations and still got a little bit of a turd. The owner would not let us fly the plane as part of the pre-buy inspection. Maybe this should have been a no go from the start. What I did not understand was that when the pre-buy came back saying "It looks great from 10 ft away but up close there are a lot of imperfections in the paint." means they prettied it up for sale. The other thing I did not take into consideration and the pre-buy did not specify, the plane sat largely for unused for 2+ years. It got flown an hour or two once a year but that was it. The first oil change and every change after revealed a very high amount of carbon. The engine was at TBO and I understood the implications of that. I might have put too much faith in running past TBO for this plane. Recently another pilot had a prop strike in the plane and I sent the engine out for overhaul. The crank and all connecting rods had to be scrapped for corrosion. At this point it might have been less expensive to buy a new engine. And fortunately the prop strike forced the rebuild sooner than I would have otherwise as all oil tests were showing only minimal wear on the main bearings. My suggestion. Get A LOT of advise and make certain the person doing the pre-buy inspection is qualified. I did not fall in love with the plane, but I did fall in love with the price.

Don't ask the seller to recommend a pre buy inspector! Ask others in the area or get a list from the Fisdo.

Does this apply to far103?

May i ask what state yall are in?

Oh but you do have to federally register your car it's called the BMV license plate

Has anyone here heard of a "hanger annual"? I've known guys that get a sign off on an annual by sending a picture of them flying to the AI.

Interesting. And by the way, why is it that airplane motors and tech is not as reliable as a car? What's the reason they can't build smaller simpler type planes that are as reliable as your car is?

In 50 years they may bill you for the removal of the hanger just like mobile parks

Isn't the life expectancy of an airplane about 25 to 30 years The engines are they leased quite often rather than with the airplane when you buy the plane

When your car engine dies you coast off the road. When your plane engine dies your in big trouble.

The first thing you do is, RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Worldwide Steel Buildings. They have hangars.

Its kinda absurd how complicated this is!

"Planes aren't as reliable as cars?" says the guys who show a Jag. This is coming from a "former" X-Type owner.

No one in the USA owns land. We lease land hence Property Tax!

It is absolutely not the case that a Cessna 172 is less reliable than a car because it has so many complicated systems in it. Quite the contrary, it has very few systems, and all of them are very simple. The only reason you are ever able to fly it is because they are simple. The reason it's unreliable is because it's very old - both in design and in age. Your car's engine has a computer governing fuel injection, mixture, ignition, and pretty much every other aspect of engine's function. It's just that it's a new design using new ideas and new materials, so it's very reliable. Let's not get it twisted. FAA's certification requirements that are supposed to make airplanes reliable and safe have stifled innovation to a point where light singles are so much more expensive and less reliable that it's been an obvious safety hazard for a while.

All 7 are EXPENSIVE

I'll go out on a limb here and say the first thing you should know before buying a plane is know how to fly!

This makes me never want to buy an airplane. I don't need that stress in my life.

… 20 hours to install avionics well 80 hours. Just that tells you a lot. How do we know how many hours are truly needed by an expert mechanic to do the job?!

Much more like buying a house than buying a car 😅

Uh your car is federally registered? Lmao

Way too long of a video. Could be several videos

Rewired ~ 18 F-16 cockpits in a year. Thats heavy avionics wiring and thats a solo project for both the bays and the cockpit. I cant imagine these other planes have an electrical system of an F-16. But who knows. Thats at 40 hrs a week. Certainly did not get paid private business wages.