That's a presumption.

Failure may have occurred without the seller's awareness.


Owning an airplane makes you a gambler.

The prebuy is a calculated risk. Will you spend more on the prebuy than the squawks take to fix? Will the seller take less if there is no prebuy? And so forth. You can assess you will come out ahead on expected value.

In the age of sport analytics, it is like going for it on 4th down. 25 years ago, hardly anyone did, now it is common.

My plane also had broken windshield deice. It was also a trivial fix. I also think a prebuy would NOT find this. The windshield bleed air systems on legacy Citation can't really be tested in a shop, it needs airspeed to work. I would bet this issue would be missed on close to 100% of all prebuy inspections.

The point is a prebuy won't find a lot of stuff, they are very imperfect. Every plane I bought with a prebuy missed some significant issues.


Not always. In these class airplanes, the seller is the owner and he may have used contract pilots. He may not know very much at all about what is wrong with the plane.

Also, the windshield bleed air system may *appear* to work in the air when it doesn't. It takes meaningful time to overheat, and if the valve is stuck in just the right place, it may actually work decently well without proper control depending on conditions.


Absolutely.

If a seller wants to prebuy my plane when I sell it, go for it. If they don't, it is up to them. A seller that makes a no prebuy offer will get a discount not so much for the potential squawks (though every shop finds something), but also for the reduced hassle of bringing the plane for inspection.

Mike C.

Basically never. No prebuy mechanics wants their name in the log books.

Many mechanics refuse to do prebuys generally. Lots of liability, you piss off the seller, or he buyer, or even both, and the plane might get stuck in their hangar for days or weeks while the parties argue.

If a mechanic does the prebuy, squawks are found, and the deal done, they usually end up fixing the squawks and thus the repair is what is logged, not anything else.

Mike C.

Several pages ago, a buyer related as to how they call previous shops that performed maintenance for the seller, to ask for details beyond which are in the logbooks (or work orders/invoices, if made available).

I’ve bought several airplanes, yet have never picked up the phone and called the sellers’ maintenance professionals for inside details I didn’t pay for. (Context piston GA). Through my lens, that information belongs to the aircraft owner, not the random public.

As a buyer, if I had a specific query for a shop that the aircraft owner recently hired to perform maintenance, I would communicate that request openly to the owner, and if both owner and the shop are willing to spend their time on this conversation, ensure the shop is compensated appropriately for the billable hours they’ve diverted to address the request.

Like Tarver said, I see clear and respectful communication as key.

Shops and owners, do you see it differently?

Overall, this would be and should be rare. In the piston environment, I've run across entries describing an inspection with a list of discrepancies given to the owner. This tells me that at some point, someone pissed off the mechanic and they felt the need to document an "inspection" which normally isn't documented other than an annual or 100 hour. If repairs were involved, those would be documented of course.

The turbine world is different in that I rarely see prebuy inspections per se. Normally, the aircraft goes through its next major periodic inspection and it becomes an issue of who pays for the time and cycle limited items. If I read that entry and compared it to any other major periodic inspection (no major issues), I doubt I would be able to tell the difference from the entry alone.

Good luck.

Yes but as a mechanic I'm not real fond of airplanes taken apart and put back together, filters and spark plugs changed, screens removed etc with NO log entry after my last inspection or work was completed.

If they do not put it back together correctly I'm the last in the logs and it's tough to prove otherwise.

There is no records being made of the work performed. Sure the actual inspection is not a real "FAA recognized Thing" but the work to get there and back is. Just mentioning prebuy as the reason clears up any confusion as to why an airplane might have had two filter changes between its normal oil change.

A simple entry of "Removed all cowlings, inspection panels and various interior panels for access to perform a prebuy inspection. Reinstalled all parts removed. AP XXX Would be a help.

Same on the engine "Removed oil filter to cut open and inspect for metal, removed oil suction screen, no metal found, Removed spark plugs for borescope inspection and compression test for prebuy inspection and reinstalled. AP. XXXX

It's the only correct way for what is being done.

I absolutely call previous owners and mechanics if I can. They can always decline to talk - it’s their choice. Most of the time they’re happy to talk. I’ve stopped looking at a plane based on a mechanic grumbling about how the owner was a skinflint and always argued over “airworthiness or not” items. That certainly didn’t show up in the logs.

This is another step towards making sure that the seller doesn’t know more about the plane than I do.

So what did your client, future employer do?

They bought the plane without the pre buy. I don’t think this can go to bad though. All three engines are zero time since (CZI)/ overhaul. The aircraft is going through a phase C2 inspection ( not at the new owners expense). My big worry would be hidden corrosion in the areas not looked at on the inspection and the engines are not on MSP .When the fresh engines come back from czi . It would be interesting to look at the cycle limited items cards . I would not have done it this way though !!

The 2C check is a big one. If it is at a service center, you will be in good shape.

The 2C check is a big one. If it is at a service center, you will be in good shape.

I haven't heard that since the Jetstar days!

Here's my take away from this.

A seller sold you a plane he knew, or should have known, had this issue and he didn't disclose it to you. An inop windshield de-icing problem on a jet is not a minor issue, even if the repair cost is minimal. This seller advocates not needing pre buys. Oh the irony.

You choosing not to do a pre buy on an airplane makes you a gambler. Plain and simple.

Now gambling is fine. It can be fun. Exciting. But it's still gambling. And like other forms, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.

The seller is always the house, because they have more info than you. And if you gamble enough as a buyer, you're unlikely to beat the house. Though gamblers love to tell you how they beat the house. Rarely mentioning how the house beat them. And worse.

To each their own.

Missing engine logbooks.
Unknown / undisclosed major damage history - landed with brakes froze up on one side.
Represented with new paint, paint was 8 years old.
Unknown / undisclosed damage history - deer strike.
Aircraft logbooks in total disarray X 2 airplanes.

That is all stuff we caught on a visual inspection / logbook review before our clients wasted $20k - $40k on a prebuy.

And that is just the last couple of months!

I don't have time to compile a list of the stuff I have seen in the last 20+ years.

Buyer beware.