Bad Stories about Plane Purchases

I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have unfortunately have had a bad (expensive
or otherwise)experience with a plane purchase. I will also post for good
experiences. Thanks !!

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
(possible Mooney buyer)

I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have had a good experience with a plane
purchase. I have the bad experience posts also. My guess is that the
good will outweigh the bad by a long shot (or at least I am hoping so)
Thanks !!

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
(possible Mooney buyer)

It's a crap shoot. I've had 3 planes in the last 6 yrs. Plane one I bought
from
a dealer far away. No prebuy. Didn't have a single problem with it. Plane
three I bought
from a dealer a few hundred miles away, looked at by a friend and haven't
had a problem with
it. Plane two I bought from a local owner, had an annual as a prebuy, low
time plane (900 hrs),
engine started making metal a year later, seems like I was fixing one thing
after another
till I sold it. So out of five planes I've owned .. the only one I had a
good prebuy done cost me
a fortune constantly until I sold it. The others never had any issues. Go
figure.

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have had a good experience with a plane
purchase. I have the bad experience posts also. My guess is that the
good will outweigh the bad by a long shot (or at least I am hoping so)
Thanks !!

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
(possible Mooney buyer)

Jon Kraus wrote:

I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have unfortunately have had a bad (expensive
or otherwise)experience with a plane purchase. I will also post for good
experiences. Thanks !!

Well, you're starting with a complex plane, which will mean more surprises
for you, but from what everyone's posting, the Mooneys (metal wing) are
about as simple as complex planes get.

My experiences with my Warrior were neither good nor bad, but I did learn a
lot -- for example, if you want to fly IFR and have old radios in the plane,
be prepared for lots of trips to the avionics tech, especially if the
previous owner was VFR-only and didn't really care if he could hear ident on
nav2 or the CDI was 15 degrees off on alternate Tuesdays. If you learn to
remove the radios yourself so that you can drop them off and pick them up,
and you're a bit flexible about time, and you might find that avionics techs
will try to fit smallish jobs into a single billing hour. They can also
often source used parts for you, since they make most of their money
removing old avionics stacks and installing new ones.

Maintenance costs will likely be your single biggest item, so be *very*
specific about what work you want done on your plane, ask for a rough
estimate in advance (understanding that unexpected problems can show up),
and try to be present while the work is being done: I'm not suggesting that
mechanics are dishonest (on the contrary, mine have been excellent), but it
gets expensive fast once they start doing things you could do yourself.
They need to understand that you're not one of the toss-them-the-keys,
never-look-under-the-cowling, money-is-no-object owners you see around airports.

In my experience, mechanics (especially the ones used to working on
commercially-registered planes) tend to order expensive parts from the
manufacturer rather than much cheaper third-party parts, especially for
non-critical things like plastics, fairings, windows, etc. -- the people on
the Mooney list will help you learn to source things like that for a
fraction of the price (and typically much higher quality than the
manufacturer's parts as well). That's another big opportunity to control costs.

Even taking all of this into consideration, the rule of thumb is to set
aside 25% of the purchase price as a reserve for unplanned repairs and
upgrades during the first couple of years -- or, in other words, don't spend
more than 80% of what you have available. From my experience, that's about
right. If you accept in advance that you'll have to spend an extra $25K on
a $100K plane in the first couple of years, over and above regular flying
costs, you'll end up with a good story; if you let it catch you by surprise,
you'll end up with a bad one.

Best of luck, and you'll have my envy when you're zooming past me in your
Mooney.


All the best,


David

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have unfortunately have had a bad (expensive
or otherwise)experience with a plane purchase. I will also post for good
experiences. Thanks !!

Very few aircraft purchases are likely to be purely bad or purely good.

I'll offer some hindsight-based advice from my own experience:

* Review the logbooks yourself. The mechanic doing the prepurchase
inpection may or may not note all of the interesting details. In my own
case, the prepurchase inspection made no mention of the airplane not being
up-to-date on inspections related to IFR requirements.

* If there are any contingencies, seller-provided add-ons, repairs,
whatever, make sure that the language in your contract is very clear. The
seller likely will take any opportunity to skimp on their obligations, if
the contract offers an opportunity to do so.

* Any inspection on which the sale is contingent must be done by a
disinterested third-party, one of your choosing. A prepurchase is useless
otherwise, and a "legal" annual inspection can be accomplished without
necessarily bringing the airplane up to your standards (I put "legal" in
quotes, because what's legal to the IA may not seem legal to you or me).
Make sure the A&P/IA doing any inspection is very familiar with the type of
aircraft. Talk to type clubs and other owners to find out who the local
"expert" in that type is, to find an appropriate person to do inspections.

* Before making a final agreement to purchase, do a thorough preflight
inspection and complete inflight testing of *everything* on the airplane.
Fly the airplane through a wide range of its envelope, from slow flight to
the top of the yellow arc. Test EVERY piece of avionics equipment
installed; for navigation equipment, reference visual landmarks to ascertain
accuracy. Make sure various entities (ATC, other pilots, Unicom operators)
can receive communications and transponder signals.

Finally, it's probably best to decide ahead of time what course of action
you plan to take should something regarding the sale go wrong. One option
is always legal action against the seller, but in truth that will involve a
huge amount of headache, time, and expense and you may find that stress is
better invested in simply rectifying whatever problem with the airplane that
exists. Of course, it's better to do as much in advance of the sale to
ensure you know what you're getting and that the airplane meets the seller's
claims (if any).

Regardless, you can expect to spend as much as one or two annual inspections
or more getting the airplane up to your standards after purchase. Make sure
you have enough reserve money to cover those expenses. Most airplanes being
sold are being sold because the owner has finally figured out that they can
no longer justify ownership, often after the airplane has been left somewhat
neglected (though usually still airworthy) for some time. Things that might
be acceptable to an owner thinking of getting rid of the airplane anyway
might not be acceptable to a new owner expecting to get a lot of use out of
their newly acquired airplane.

Pete

I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have unfortunately have had a bad (expensive
or otherwise)experience with a plane purchase. I will also post for good
experiences. Thanks !!

It's all good, with hind-sight.

Plane one, a Piper Warrior, was an easy buy -- but it took forever to find.
After a good pre-buy we dickered on price, the seller came down to my offer,
we shook hands, signed the paperwork, and the deal was done.

That plane flew great until my first annual, where the shop (the same one
that did the pre-buy) found $5K worth of stuff to fix. Little did I know
they were going bankrupt, and were trying to make their payroll on my
nickel. As a new owner, beware!

After that, it was (and still is) a trouble-free, great little plane.

Our second plane, a Piper Pathfinder, was a "cream-puff" we had been
drooling over on the field. We discovered that it was making metal at the
pre-buy. We offered commensurately less money, the seller agreed, and we
immediately put in an overhauled Lycoming O-540.

We spent a lot more money than we had expected, but ended up with (in our
opinion) our perfect plane. Other than basic maintenance and a fair number
of upgrades, it's been a low cost, trouble-free plane.

Buying a plane is tough, and a crap shoot -- but aircraft ownership is
easily worth the hassle.

Good luck!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

So when are you going to buy a Decathlon or other such toy "for Mary"?

I've got to find a few partners before buying a "fun" plane...

The Decathlon is very cool, but it's not a great traveling plane, nor can it
carry my kids.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Hi John

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.
Two of my friends each have aircraft that had accident damage over 30
years ago.
So What?
They have flown beautifully for more than 30 years since the accident -
so what is the big deal? I absolutely don't get it. - It would be
different if the accident was 5 flight hours ago - but these are more
than a major TBO away.

Tony


In article ,
Jon Kraus wrote:

I am looking into purchasing my own plane... I think that I am pretty
aware of the costs (as much as a non-owner can be). I would like to
hear from those of you who have unfortunately have had a bad (expensive
or otherwise)experience with a plane purchase. I will also post for good
experiences. Thanks !!

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
(possible Mooney buyer)





--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Almost Instrument
Cessna 172H C-GICE

"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

In rec.aviation.owning Paul Sengupta wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:LUzSc.288971$Oq2.254424@attbi_s52...
So when are you going to buy a Decathlon or other such toy "for Mary"?

I've got to find a few partners before buying a "fun" plane...

The Decathlon is very cool, but it's not a great traveling plane, nor can
it
carry my kids.

Hence the "for Mary" bit. As in second plane. As well as the PA28,
not instead of...

It can carry one kid at a time...

Fugitaboutit. I suggested that idea before he bought the pathfinder. It
seemed to make perfect logic to me, but it seemed to pass Jay by.


--
Frank Stutzman
Bonanza N494B "Hula Girl"
Hood River, OR