"tony roberts" wrote in message
news:nospam-4DDD2A.22064411082004@shawnews...
One thing that I don't understand, and hopefully someone here will
enlighten me, is why it is so sacred to have an aircraft that hasn't had
accident damage.

IMHO, it depends on when the damage occurred. Recent damage history is
certainly cause for concern. Presumably the airplane has been repaired to
its original airworthiness standards, but you never really know for sure.
Better to have someone else fly the plane for awhile to prove it.

Damage that occurred 5 or 10 years ago is much less of an issue. As you
suggest, planes that have been damage can be and are repaired to perfectly
normal, flyable condition.

In the end, it's as much a market value thing as anything else. It's not so
much that you want to strictly avoid airplanes with damage history as it is
that you don't want to pay as much for one, since most other people wouldn't
either. The more recent the damage, the greater the discount ought to be.
That said, in any case it would be unusual for the discount to be very
large, even with recent damage. I could see very recent damage history
reducing the price by as much as 10%, maybe 15% worst-case for very serious
damage (for damage that's been properly repaired, of course).

Pete