You are posting on BTalk and representing to be an aircraft acquisitions expert. 90% of the BTalk population buy and fly pistons. If you are buying a 3 or 4 year old Phenom 300 or CJ3+, I would stick to Cesscom, CAMP, or EEC - yes in the jet world, that is a different question, but then you need to qualify your "suggestions". Half the people on this forum don't even know what CAMP or EEC is.

You are posting on BTalk and representing to be an aircraft acquisitions expert. 90% of the BTalk participants buy and fly pistons. If you are buying a 3 or 4 year old Phenom 300 or CJ3+, I would stick to Cesscom, CAMP, or EEC - yes in the jet world, that is a different question, but then you need to qualify your "suggestions". Half the people on this forum don't even know what CAMP or EEC is.

What are you talking about? I don't even drink. Are YOU ok? Don;'t like to be questioned when providing erroneous information?

You are posting on BTalk and representing to be an aircraft acquisitions expert. 90% of the BTalk population buy and fly pistons. If you are buying a 3 or 4 year old Phenom 300 or CJ3+, I would stick to Cesscom, CAMP, or EEC - yes in the jet world, that is a different question, but then you need to qualify your "suggestions". Half the people on this forum don't even know what CAMP or EEC is.

Interesting - viewtopic.php?f=49&t=231790&p=3499340&hilit=piston+go#p3499340

"Pistons - yes, we can do this for piston aircraft as well, getting good sold comparables is much harder, but we know enough honest brokers in the industry to help determine the value of most common piston aircraft. Everything else works the same, I can get the 337 file and look for repairs, modifications, and damage.

I find in pistons that there are a lot more bad purchase agreements / deals and that many don’t know the process as well, so we’re actually more of a benefit to the client because we can explain the steps and how to get the deal closed.

What if it’s a no-go? - you get a go around. For free."

Are you ok?

Interesting - viewtopic.php?f=49&t=231790&p=3499340&hilit=piston+go#p3499340

"Pistons - yes, we can do this for piston aircraft as well, getting good sold comparables is much harder, but we know enough honest brokers in the industry to help determine the value of most common piston aircraft. Everything else works the same, I can get the 337 file and look for repairs, modifications, and damage.

I find in pistons that there are a lot more bad purchase agreements / deals and that many don’t know the process as well, so we’re actually more of a benefit to the client because we can explain the steps and how to get the deal closed.

What if it’s a no-go? - you get a go around. For free."

I've come to question a prepurchase inspection even for jet aircraft.

My jet was bought with minimal prepurchase inspections. It had a test flight, engine borescopes, and a records review, but that's it. Nothing otherwise was looked at by any mechanic.

Of the many existing faults I found on the aircraft after I owned it, I doubt more than 1 or 2 would have been found in a prepurchase inspection as they were all subtle things with little visual evidence. I also doubt the cost of the fixes for those faults would have totaled the prepurchase inspection costs. Maybe I was lucky, I don't know, but jets tend to be generally maintained to a higher quality than anything else I have seen out there.

There is simply too many things to look at on a jet for any prepurchase inspection short of a major phase inspection. Doing a major phase is just not practical as a buyer, especially in a tight market. Shops don't have the schedule, buyers don't have the inclination, and you don't have the time.

In an ideal world, yes, go do the prepurchase inspection, but ultimately at the end of the day, the airplane is what it is and the prepurchase inspection has only a modest chance of uncovering something meaningfully serious.

In the times I have done a prepurchase inspection, the plane always had significant faults that were not found. The prepurchase inspection just isn't going to catch that much.

The most important thing to do for a jet is a document review, primarily the maintenance status report. There is an overall assessment if the status report has been faithfully maintained, plus looking at specifics for what things are coming due.

Engine borescopes are worth it since they are relatively low cost, quick, and what they find can be very expensive. Airframe stuff isn't like that generally.

A test flight is good and relatively low effort and time. If you do it right, you can cover a lot of ground and make sure systems work. I would do a better job than I did the first time, but it was good enough. I can think of only one thing I might have caught on the test flight that I missed, an inoperative fuel shutoff valve on the left engine. That wasn't a big deal to fix in the end and the valve had likely been broken for a while and the prior owner just never noticed.

My plane is now in far better shape than when I bought with a lot of little things fixed and improved. These fixes probably added up to less than $20K over the time I have owned the plane. That's doing pretty good on the scale of something like this.

I'm sure there are plenty of horror stories to trot out to argue against what I have written, but then there are plenty of horror stories of planes that did have a prepurchase inspection and the fault was found afterward.

Mike C.

I think the most tedious and helpful part of the prebuy was squaring up CAMP and the log books review to make sure they were in sync and the proper maintenance had been done. I think it took the broker about 8 hours and most of that was apparently because CAMP isn’t all that intuitive to use. The 2 “errors” were part serial number mismatches, and the plane was only 7 years old, but I was shocked there was any to be honest.

I’m looking at CAMP alternatives now as I don’t find it all that helpful, it’s basically an expensive excel sheet. We had our inspection done this January as it was due and in February someone from CAMP emailed us and was like “here’s a list of things that are going to be due in the next 6 months”….cool that would have been way more helpful before the inspection was done….plus they keep silently raising the price every year and you only find out about it when you get the invoice. So looking at options.

Chip-

I switched from CAMP to Traxxall. While I don’t think it is functionally any better or worse, it was significantly less expensive.

Chip - are you serious? You actually advise your customers to do "prepurchase" inspections in your aircraft acquisition business?

Why?

I would respectfully disagree with your assessment that PPIs are "the heart of an acquisition" or "where the rubber meets the runway" - all a PPI is - besides a total waste of your customer's money - is a mirage that provides a false sense of security. If you continue doing this, one of these days you and your customers are bound to get burned especially if you start buying older airframes.

The scope and focus of PPIs is flexible and impossible to get under an airplane's hood when conducting it.

If you are serious about assessing the condition of an aircraft prior to purchase, the only process I would buy into is (a) conduct a thorough logbook and records review including a review of the airplane's history, (b) bring along an experienced mechanic who know the make and model to perform a thorough visual inspection, (c) conduct a test flight with a pilot who is also experienced in the make and model and (d) if everything checks out, perform a phase inspection or annual inspection conducted by an FAA-certified shop with IA authorization, and which assures you maintain FAA compliance and airworthiness through standardized FAA/manufacturer guidelines. Any airworthiness findings are on the seller - everything else is on the buyer's account. Besides being the cheapest annual a buyer will ever perform, it is the only way to truly get under the hood. As an added bonus, the buyer gets a fresh annual out of the deal.

There are a few exceptions to this rule, but in general, this is the only responsible way to go, especially if you are advising customers who don't know what they are doing.

Plus - if you perform annuals with reputable shops or OEM maintenance facilities in lieu of PPI's you could expand your business to cover any make and model that comes across your desk.

You are saying a buyer should purchase a 3 or 4 year old Phenom 300 or CJ3+ after reviewing the Cescom or CAMP?

Surely not?

And just because the Phenom is on EEC or the Citation is on PP/PT, that doesn't mean you should skip the prepurchase inspection.

We review the CAMP or Cescom before even booking our ticket to travel and conduct a visual inspection.

I think most of the folks on this forum are a lot smarter than you give them credit for. I know you're a jet owner and most of the folks who post on BT are not, BUT there's a LOT of jet owners that find their way to Beechtalk, they know what CAMP, Cescom and EEC is.

Have you ever wondered why I post on here and not CJP? It is simple, if a guy is looking to buy a jet, he can google and find answers to his questions that are public on BT. If I post on CJP, he would have to join to see them.

I do appreciate you and Mike, you give me the opportunity to address things like prepurchase inspections vs. prebuy surveys. Hopefully an aircraft buyer or two will find their way here and learn what to avoid. If they end up hiring us in the process that is great, doing acquisitions pays the bills, but my passion is to protect aircraft buyers... I'll do that for free.

I've come to question a prepurchase inspection even for jet aircraft.

My jet was bought with minimal prepurchase inspections. It had a test flight, engine borescopes, and a records review, but that's it...

There is simply too many things to look at on a jet for any prepurchase inspection short of a major phase inspection. Doing a major phase is just not practical as a buyer, especially in a tight market. Shops don't have the schedule, buyers don't have the inclination, and you don't have the time...

In the times I have done a prepurchase inspection, the plane always had significant faults that were not found. The prepurchase inspection just isn't going to catch that much.
Mike C.

Had that blue water issue on a colleague’s G-IV in the late 90s. You don’t want to know what it cost them for the repair and testing of the pressure vessel, but the seller paid the repair center invoice.

As expected since saying anything else would contradict your assumed expert status and predilection to spend your client's money.


That's more a statement about the shops you use and what they charge than the real cost of those repairs. So far my repairs of found issues hasn't added up to what a prebuy would have cost. Most things I found would likely have been missed on a prebuy.

A prebuy simply wasn't an option in late 2020, no shop had time, no seller would give permission, so you have to deal with the realities of the time. Picking up a Citation V for $700K is worth some risk and I can clearly sell it for far more than I paid now.


Granted. But for every horror story averted by a prebuy, there are as many if not more horror stories about what a prebuy misses. I was certain you would play up what was found on prebuy and fail to acknowledge what gets missed.


The under potty area is supposed to be inspected every 12 months for this problem. The severity of what you describe sounds like some pencil whipping going on since it would take more than 12 months to ruin that much of the belly. And for such a young airplane, oh well. My now 34 year old airplane has no such problems.

On my test flight, during pre flight I opened the toilet tank compartment and checked that since it is a known weak spot. Saw no leaking or corrosion on the structure under the toilet. That gave me some confidence. It doesn't take a full prebuy to reduce your risks a lot, a careful visual inspection by you can cover most of those concerns.

For my plane, I converted my toilet to a dry system, no blue fluid at all. I still have the inspection every 12 months, but there's no fluid source to cause any problems. Also saved me 15 lbs of weight, too.

Also, I had the relief tube removed, too. Those are a source of corrosion problems as well.

Mike C.