I recently had a future customer//employer contact me about purchasing a Falcon 900B. Question is “ Would you purchase an aircraft without a third party evaluation. My answer was you are kidding “Right”.

Depends on the price. Depends what you know about the plane.

Well maybe not a Falcon!

But 3 of the 6 airplanes I've owned I already knew I wanted and just gave them a sniff and a kick and wrote the check.

But not a Falcon unless I had silly money and didn't care.

Buying a jet without a prebuy is very different from buying a Cessna 172 (or even a Baron or a Twin Bonanza or any other piston airplane) without one. I bought my last 2 airplanes (a Twin Bonanza and a Duke) without a real "prebuy." I went and looked it over myself with a buddy who knew the make/model. But neither was a particularly expensive airplane. A large multi-engine turbine is a totally different animal.

About 20 years ago a friend sold a Citabria. Buyer wanted it sight unseen. Friend said “don’t you want to to come look at it or do a prebuy?”

“Son, I buy and sell quarter million dollar heavy equipment every day. I don’t need to do a prebuy for this toy.”

3 months later he found the spar was cracked and called complaining about it.

Depends on the price and how much he can afford to lose


Unless I’m planning on a full restoration and it’s a smoking price, the plane is going to get looked at before he buy it, but I’m not rich

NO.....no....and no. There are way too many things that could be wrong without someone looking it over.

I'd probably try and call the last shop who did major maintenance and try and get an unbiased opinion on the condition of the plane and the traits of the previous owners. If that sounded reasonable I'd set up a shop to inspect the major items....and review log books.

Not knowing anything about this plane....but, can it be over temp'd? and is there ops data to download and review.

The purpose of the prebuy isn’t just for financial reasons. You want to know the plane you are hopping into is safe to fly. If someone you trust maintained it or is the prior owner sure, but outside of that I want someone to perform a thorough evaluation.

I've bought 1 Bonanza, 3 Barons, 1 Duke, 1 Twin Bonanza, and 2 King Airs without ever doing a pre buy. Most of them I bought site unseen. After years of having them, I wouldn't do anything different. Pre buys are annoying, it's a bunch of people nit picking and trying to pin something on someone else. Stroke me. Talk to the owner, look at flight aware, listen to you gut and move on or make the buy. There isn't anything that can't be fixed, and most of these airplanes bring about as much in scrap as they do retail. So really, your risk is just the delta of that.

If you can't afford to fix the airplane, then I suggest you don't buy it.

Chris

I've bought lots of planes without a prebuy. But I wouldn't even think of buying a turbine without one.

Who did the pre buy on your turbine?

Chris

Depends. If the maintenance was done by the manufacturer or the manufacturers service center and you could get the actual inspection sheets then actually looking at the airplane would be a waste of time. At that level of airplane you usually hire an expert to go over the records but don’t open up the plane as much

I’ve only owned a couple of aircraft so, I still consider myself an amateur when it comes to buying/selling. While looking for a 421, I located one in FL, that by all appearances looked good on the broker’s website. Flew down the next day from NY to see in person. Salesman showed me around the plane and allowed me to review the logbooks. All seemed in order. The owner showed up and again showed me the plane. I liked what I saw through my amateur sunglasses and could tell that The deal was coming together. I asked him to take me up in it but, he said that he was “too busy” and “didn’t have the time”. Thinking to myself - Dude, I just flew down here from NY to buy your airplane and you don’t have a half hour to take me up in it?? Although I was a little suspicious because of this response, I had pretty much decided that I wanted to buy the plane, (like I said, amateur). We came to an agreement on a price, pending the outcome of a pre-buy. It was tugged the following day to a reputable shop on the field. The mechanic assured me that he knew the 400 series well and knew exactly what to look for. He spent nearly 2 days going through the logbooks and reported that they were complete and there was nothing unexpected found. So far so good.. Then he started looking at the plane - long story a little longer - he called and said that the plane isn’t airworthy and cannot be flown before several repairs and A.D.’s had been taken care of. At least $25k+ and he said that hadn’t even really opened up the plane yet. I told him to stop work and send me the bill.

It’s true that just about anything can be fixed, but I wasn’t looking for a project. I wanted an airworthy plane that I could buy and fly away. In my eyes, the cost of the prebuy was well worth it. I ended up being a little wiser and found a much better plane in KS that I’m still loving and flying as often as I can.

Buying a Falcon without a prebuy is insane, last guy I know who did so ended up coughing up $600k in corrosion repairs when he sold it.

We just closed a King Air F90 last month that was represented as No Damage History and had sold represented that way to several different buyers, when we inspected the airplane prior to prebuy, Marty found that it had major damage history. We negotiated a $100k reduction in the sales price, luckily the prebuy itself turned up normal stuff including a corroded elevator that had to be replaced.

We did buy three airplanes for clients last year without full prebuys, a 600 hour 2017 TBM 930 maintained at Socata, end of the year, our original deal fell through and left us without time to do a prebuy… and a 2022 Phenom 300E, less than 200 hours… and a King Air 260 with 11 hours on it.

The risk on turbine aircraft is way too high to skip a prebuy.

I've done it three times.
First time was ok.
2nd and 3rd time were disasters...
Will not do it again...