The Beginning
Have you ever had a buddy that was just a bad influence? My buddy is the reason I bought a plane. It’s his fault, I swear! I want to fly more and he knows it. The aero club is having a hard time keeping its aircraft available for member use, and he reminds me of it. Lastly, he knows…I want my own plane.
The Temptations
“You need to buy your own plane.”
“We got up this morning and flew to breakfast.”
“I flew down to Long Beach for the weekend.”
“We logged 150 hours in our plane this year.”
“Are the club planes fixed?”
The Start
I was being conditioned, and so secretly, I started to look for a plane to buy. These days it’s easy to type “plane for sale” into a search engine and be rewarded with every type of plane currently for sale. Jets, experimental, multi-engine, prop…the list goes on. As I began my search, I quickly learned that I’d need to fine tune my key words in order to find success in this endeavor. I asked several aircraft owners, “why’d you buy THIS plane”? We all have a TYPE. Some enjoy driving trucks instead of cars while others enjoy brunettes over blondes. For airplanes, I flew a lot of hours in a Cessna 172 and thought that was what I wanted. One good friend helped me narrow down my search by asking one simple question, “What’s your mission?”
The Research
Why am I buying a plane and what will I do with it once I have it? I’ve heard owning a plane is similar to owning a boat. The two best days of owning a boat are the day you buy and the day you sell. Planes, like boats, aren’t really an every day form of transportation unless you plan to use it for every day business. I did not. So what would I actually do with my own aircraft? The questions I needed to ask were, how many people did I plan to fly? Do I plan to haul a lot of cargo? How far did I plan to go? And Lastly, how much was I willing to pay to meet my mission?
The Costs
The costs of owning an airplane only starts with its purchase. Other things I had to consider were where would I store it, how much insurance would I need, how much will scheduled maintenance (as well as unscheduled maintenance) cost, how many hours do I plan to fly each year and at what fuel cost? It turns out, planes like to fly and will quickly break down if you don’t keep them in use. Planes need their engines ran, their flight controls maneuvered and their fuel tanks filled. If you don’t, seals dry out, rust sets in and valves start to stick. Owning a plane is a little like owning a dog, you must take it out for exercise.
The Discovery
My search continued, but now more narrowly focused. I searched the internet, I looked at sales magazines and read the bulletin boards at airport FBO’s. I decided that I’d like a 4-seater capable of carrying the weight of three adults approximately 300-400 miles each leg. The first plane I looked at was a Piper Cherokee 140. I looked it over myself first, then took it to a local mechanic for a pre-buy inspection. Within 20 minutes, the mechanic said “ok, are you looking for a project plane? Or something to start flying immediately?” Ouch. The value of a pre-buy inspection surpassed the money spent versus the money saved on a bad purchase.
Several pages into an internet search I found an old “for sale” advertisement from a Flight School about an hour away. The webpage hadn’t been updated in awhile, but listed several planes. I gave the school a call and to my delight, the planes were still for sale.
The One?
The school had two Piper Warriors for sale since their clientele were renting the high wing Cessna’s more often than the low wing Pipers. Like miles for a car, engine and airframe flight hours are used to determine an aircrafts usage. A general rule of thumb for a privately used General Aviation aircraft is 100 hours of flight per year. Using this metric, a 40 year old plane would expect to have about 4,000 hours of flight time on it.
The two planes for sale were both about 40 years old and had 3,000 and 6,000 hours of flight time. The main difference between the two was the higher time aircraft was configured with a Garmin 430 GPS unit that allowed it to be certified and flown as an IFR aircraft. The additional hours were attributed to the fact that the owner was leasing back the aircraft to the flight school and it was being used for flight training.
The Inspection
I carefully kept an eye out for airplanes being used as trainers. No one loves their plane like an owner. Think about it, how well do you care for a rental car? With this in mind, I negotiated an offer that included an up-to-date annual inspection be completed by the seller as well as a pre-buy inspection by my own mechanic. The purchase agreement included the statement, “the seller agrees to provide an airworthy aircraft to the purchaser”. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a valuable statement.
With a down payment in hand and annual inspection completed, they handed over the keys and allowed me to fly it to my mechanic for the pre-buy inspection. Once again, the mechanic dives in, but this time I was rewarded with, “this plane is in good shape, but does need a few repairs”. I think I bought a plane. As we reviewed the inspection report, he showed me his concerns and discussed his comments about the airworthiness items listed. A leaking fuel sending unit, cracked windscreen and most importantly a new Air Directive to inspect the wing root for corrosion were the highlights.
The aviation industry is a small community. The mechanic happened to know the owner of the flight school and sent the report over for his review. To my delight, they accepted the report and repaired every item listed as an airworthiness write-up. In total, the seller paid more than $5,000 in repairs found during the pre-buy inspection. Spending $500 on the inspection saved me $5,000 in repairs.
I Bought A Plane!
I bought a plane, and today is the best day of aircraft ownership! My plane is now resting in a hangar at the local airport. We’ve been averaging about 100 hours of flight per year. While I am a professional pilot by trade, but really enjoy flying my Warrior on days off.
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