We need a MMA match for you guys. No swords, knives or guns. Tickets on sale now.

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Ok, I’m in one of those moods…

Does Chip remind you a little of Jerry McGuire?
Inspirational videos every morning ?
Positive sayings taped to his mirrors ?
Tony Robbins dvds laying everywhere?

And maybe Chip McClure isn’t his real name.
It does fit that sales world thing.
Snappy, cool…

Maybe it’s really Ralph Obramowitz…



Chill everyone…

Most buyers of older airplanes that are probably trading for 10% of new care about the following in this order:

1) Shiny paint
2) Shiny panel
3) An interior almost as nice as their car
-good boots and glass
4) Good Engines
5) Good Inspection status
6) All the expensive stuff works well
7) Limited or no Damage history
8) Log Books mostly there

For most people, 1,2 an 3 Sell an airplane. Humans are basically like dolphins; we are attracted to shiny things

The buyer himself is able to figure out most of these things on his own. You don't need a 24 year old green mechanic charging you $180 an hour through Stevens to tell you these things.

A pilot who has flown many different airframes of the same type is way more valuable than a mechanic. "That air cycle machine isn't very cold, boots are too slow, the autopilot shouldn't do that, that light should be on, your pressurization is sick", etc.

Spend your money on a good pilot, a boroscope and you do the rest. The absolute best guy you can find is a A&P Pilot

To take an airplane that sells for 10% of what it cost new to a Weststar to get nickeled and dimed on how many turns of safety wire there are on some widget and then to try to bash the Seller in the head for money off your already unreasonably cheap airplane is absurd. Chip, if you are seriously recommending people do this with Legacies then I imagine that you aren't doing many Legacy deals. It's just a fact that cheaper airplanes in this industry simply are NOT bought/Sold in the same manner as newer/more expensive airplanes.

Final word on Legacy airplane deals: People that demand extensive prebuys ALWAYS LOSE THE AIRPLANE. You can bring anyone you want to my hangar. People that get lawyers involved in simple deals USUALLY lost the airplane. People that demand anything other than a 1 page purchase agreement are also going to lose the airplane.

Older airplanes offer an incredible value. For that value, you must assume a little risk. There's no free lunch in life. These birds aren't for everyone. If you can't handle a little risk/surprises then you aren't a good candidate for a used legacy airplane. You can't Stevens prebuy your way out of this risk. There's a reason they make brand new ones on full programs. For those that cannot afford that (most of us), follow my rules above, mitigate the risk and go enjoy your legacy jet.

FIFY But youre so spot on.

Mike T.

I understand your business model, better than most, I worked for stocking aircraft dealers for years, it is where I learned how to buy airplanes. When you are a dealer, you often have to buy airplanes "as-is" in order to get them cheap enough and therefor you have to sell them without a third party prebuy to protect your profit margin. It seems you have done a remarkable job of building up an ecosystem to support this and we aren't hearing anyone complain, so I assume it is working.

"Legacy Citations" is a broad term, I don't believe we've ever acquired a Citation older than a 1990, the reason is pretty simple, we work off a flat fee, so we charge the same amount to buy a $2M Citation as we would a $500k Citation, so our fee doesn't make sense for the buyer, and as you know a $500k Citation is a lot more work and liability / exposure than a $2M Citation, so it doesn't make sense for us either.

It seems that most of what you do is older than 1990 so we do look at things a little differently.

I'm always going to give buyers the same advice, do a full pre-purchase inspection, and a test flight and borescope the engines. But, I also understand that at some price point a real prebuy is off the table.

The last legacy we did was a 1991 Citation V, pretty decent airplane, full prebuy and 1-4 at Stevens ran up a total bill of $136k.

Most of what was discovered would have only been discovered in a mechanical prebuy and every single squawk was legitimate. (As part of our service, we include a third party Citation mechanic with over 20 years of experience to manage the prebuy to make sure everything is legit.)

Here's a few examples;

Four main cabin windows leaking – wrong seals installed
Overvoltage test failed – wouldn’t cut off ground power
Brakes worn past minimums
RH Engine ignitor INOP

These are all small things, but they are indicative of the types of discrepancies you want to find and clean up before placing the airplane into service.

We did have one very interesting squawk from the test flight, and resolving this allowed the airplane to gain over 10kts in true airspeed. The previous owner had a 400kt Citation V the entire time he owned it. Thanks to a sharp engine guy at Stevens, the new owner is seeing normal speeds.

We were all scratching our heads, I was convinced it was an indication problem, but nope... it was the wrong exhaust nozzles!

Here's the details.
Discrepancy: 1.20. (AIRWORTHY) Customer reported ITT margin too low and airspeed too slow for indicated N1 speeds at cruise, pilot noted N1 at
102.7, ITT at 600 deg C, N2 at 89.9, fuel flow at ~600 lb/hr (labor is time and materials but estimate 4 hours to troubleshoot)
Resolution: Troubleshot engine performance. Checked dataplate for fan class. Noted V-4 on both engines. Checked log entry for last overhaul and
verified V-4 fan class was recorded at test cell. Inspected exhaust nozzle cones. Measured the inside diameters of both cones and found
both to be 16.389 inches which are for fan class V-5 engines. Both cones are supposed to measure 16.528 for fan class V-4. Recommend
compliance with Cessna SL560-78-04 to replace the exhaust nozzle cones with the approved p/n 9912377-3 (Nordam p/n 225-0016-513).
See squawk 1.41 for replacement of the nozzle cones. ref Cessna 560 MM chapter 71 and 78.

It was a nightmare to get this airplane done and closed, the seller wouldn't pay his full share of the bill, there was a lot of back and forth and a lot of headaches. These types of deals take the fun out of what I do, but we battled through it and got it done.

We do the best we can, I buy an airplane for a client with the same mindset I would have if buying it for myself, it has been very challenging in this market, but as long as you have a good airplane and a good seller, it's just a matter of following the process.

I assume you mean they LOSE the airplane you are selling?

It will be 9 years in August and I have had exactly one airplane go to prebuy and not close, it just happened a few months ago, a Citation CJ2+, we pulled the toilet and there were blue water stains everywhere. We had the shop pull floorboards from the back to the front. It was everywhere. A little blue staining doesn't scare me, especially if it was found and addressed quickly. But, that much? There was either a lot of it or it had been there a long time. Judging by the small crack in the toilet, I feared the latter, so I called my client and told him that as bad as I hated it, he shouldn't buy the airplane.

Thankfully it worked out and we got a GREAT deal on a later model airplane, our client couldn't be happier!

The vast majority of our deals include an extensive prebuy (except the recent Textron prebuys where they tricked us) and most of the time attorneys are involved, sometimes seller, sometimes buyer, often both. Our LOI isn't one page, the purchase agreements are typically 15 - 20 pages, and somehow we aren't losing airplanes.

Serious question: How do you put the required disclosures about AML / KYC in a one page agreement?

I don’t have time to go through it all but it seems super unfortunate that you’ve had such consistently bad experiences with so many people trying to overcharge you for substandard work.

Change my tune? At the end of the day, we probably have a lot more in common than you recognize. I come here for fun, learning and entertainment. I’m not boasting about how cheaply I fly the single pilot jet that I own and fly but it seems like, in your view, that I would be more credible to you if I did.

My tune remains that most bizav professionals are hardworking and honest people who work to deliver sound advice and safe services and I rarely have found the low bidder to deliver the best value. It’s often painful to the checkbook, but I can’t begrudge repair stations for wanting to make a profit while delivering a reliable plane for me or friends and clients and I’m certain you don’t run your business any differently or you wouldn’t be flying a jet around.

Chip

So you say you know Michael T’s business model maybe better than anyone. But you have never sold, owned, or operated a pre 1990 citation. So you have literally zero experience with Legacy citations but keep telling guys like us 3 Mikes that we don’t know what we are talking about? I have been a customer of Mike T and have had my citation for almost 3 years now.

Stay in your lane with “Suits” that are willing to pay your high prices and go to big shops with higher prices. That’s all you know and that’s fine. I think guys with huge bank accounts love to pay for your services. We are not attacking that. So leave us alone with our WT legacy experiences.

Both worlds can be true at the same time. I operate my Citation for a tiny percentage of that your customers operate theirs for.

The question is why are you threatened by our experiences? Who do you keep attacking the way we buy and operate our planes?

For the record I am a very happy customer of Tarver. Great aircraft and more importantly great support even years after the sale. Sure legacy planes are not for everyone but they can be amazing and operated affordably. I love my plane.

Mike

Here's the details.
Discrepancy: 1.20. (AIRWORTHY) Customer reported ITT margin too low and airspeed too slow for indicated N1 speeds at cruise, pilot noted N1 at
102.7, ITT at 600 deg C, N2 at 89.9, fuel flow at ~600 lb/hr (labor is time and materials but estimate 4 hours to troubleshoot)
Resolution: Troubleshot engine performance. Checked dataplate for fan class. Noted V-4 on both engines. Checked log entry for last overhaul and
verified V-4 fan class was recorded at test cell. Inspected exhaust nozzle cones. Measured the inside diameters of both cones and found
both to be 16.389 inches which are for fan class V-5 engines. Both cones are supposed to measure 16.528 for fan class V-4. Recommend
compliance with Cessna SL560-78-04 to replace the exhaust nozzle cones with the approved p/n 9912377-3 (Nordam p/n 225-0016-513).
See squawk 1.41 for replacement of the nozzle cones. ref Cessna 560 MM chapter 71 and 78.





Most interesting thread here.
When I read the beginning of this post and then this mx writeup its amazing but I harkened back many years to my Citation days (and why it came to the fore I have no idea) and thought of nozzles. I remembered something fuzzy about nozzle diameter and speed/fuel burn continuum.
It might have been when we went from -1 to -1A engines and we had to change the nozzles. Its been 40 years ago.
Interesting to note that the mind can still drag out info from many years ago.

I have always liked the classic legacy Citation line and I feel if the right airframe is found it could be a very economical way into the jet field for many customers if done right.
I can understand both sides to this discussion and their reasons why. Both are valid for different reasons and customers. I, myself, would be very comfortable with he lower cost option but then again I've been involved as an A&P on everything from 747s on down for almost 60 years and, at one time, I knew Citations pretty well. For many customers I can see a much different approach to purchasing a jet especially if the price of entry is in multiple millions and not 500K.
But still, finding the right airframe is the key either way you go. And, only one with lots of current experience should be consulted. JMO

I never said that I had never sold an older Citation, I have sold a lot of them. I just haven’t represented a buyer for one, which is all that I’ve done for the last nine years. For the 15 years before that I bought and sold Legacy Citations and King Airs. That’s how I learned the inventorying aircraft business.

I think we may have found the real reason you don’t like me and why the projection… you think that I’m a threat to Michael T’s business because I tell people they should do prebuys.

For what it’s worth there’s probably a few brokers / dealers that feel that way. Had one last year try to BS his way around missing engine logbooks. They hate that I’m not distracted by shiny things.

So you have not dealt with a legacy citation for over 15 years. Got it.

I never said people should not do pre buys and don’t care that you think pre buys are a good thing. They are. I don’t think taking a legacy citation to a big shop makes sense. You do which shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

My problem with you is you attack things you know nothing about. I have to assume that’s because you feel threatened. You keep arguing with real world experiences from honest open people.

Why would I feel threatened by you? I don’t sell or buy aircraft. Unlike you I have nothing to gain in these threads other than information and shared experiences from real people.

You are so deep in your own bullcrap to even see how biased you are.

Mike

Mike,

9 years… over 9 years, not 15 years. And I have dealt with Legacy Citations, just not one’s from the 70’s or 80’s, I explained all of this very concisely.

I think we have a terminology issue, I consider a 1990’s Citation V a Legacy airframe and I would take it to a medium size shop like Stevens.

Would I take it to a large shop like Textron… No.

Yet, you keep attacking me saying things like “I don’t think taking a legacy citation to a big shop makes sense. You do which shows you have no idea what you are talking about.”

Then when I defend my position, you project and say I’m attacking you.

Casual outside observers opinion:

You guys have gotten so deep in disliking/wanting to argue with each other that about half the time you're in agreement without realizing it and the other half you're just putting words in the others mouth to make your point.

I think both sides of the argument have validity and that's not going to change no matter how many threads you guys turn into 20 page arguments.

It's entertaining from my seat at least so keep on keeping on.

The Jeff's should just start a sub forum under brand X for "legacy turbine/jet arguments"

^^^^^ Best post of the thread.