The buyer’s and seller’s view of what a Pre-Purchase Inspection of a business aircraft should include often differs, making negotiation a sensitive matter. To simplify matters, buyers should ensure their expectations are reasonable, Chris Kjelgaard learns...
In most purchases of pre-owned business aircraft, Pre-Purchase Inspections (PPIs) are necessary and highly important initial tasks.
Performed at the buyer’s request, the PPI is carried out to assess the physical condition of the aircraft – allowing the buyer and seller to then negotiate what (if any) repair or refurbishment work is needed to satisfy the buyer’s condition expectations – and ensure the documentation of the aircraft’s maintenance and operating history is complete.
An obvious basic first step for would-be buyers is to determine what they expect the PPI to accomplish. Clearly, it should either satisfy the buyer that the aircraft is in a condition which allows them to complete the purchase, or produce findings or repair/alteration actions which the buyer can then ask the seller to undertake before the transaction is completed.
Ultimately, however, the buyer’s expectations of the PPI’s scope should be reasonable enough to prevent the seller balking completely, creating an unresolvable hurdle causing the deal to founder.
Setting Realistic Aircraft Pre-Purchase Inspection Expectations
While for inspection-cost and other reasons the seller and buyer may not agree on what each wants the scope of the PPI to include, their differences should be resolvable by means of agreeing to adopt the recommendations made by an independent third-party.
For example, in their pre-buy negotiations, the most common way for both seller and buyer to achieve consensus is to have the OEM or third-party MRO service center hosting (and often conducting) the PPI first to provide a recommended PPI report.
Lee Rohde, President & CEO of Essex Aviation, says the MRO facility should have a specific recommended PPI report for every different aircraft model it handles, based on the manufacturer’s own inspection and maintenance recommendations and accounting for every unique aspect of that model.
The report will also take account of the service center’s own findings on the individual aircraft’s condition, having performed its own preliminary inspection of the aircraft in question.
This article was originally published by AvBuyer on February 28, 2024.
