An overview of every pilot's dream: owning an airplane
As surely as the swallows return to Capistrano when winter hints at spring, thousands of pilots begin an annual pilgrimage to the classified ads in search of airplanes to buy.
The FAA estimates that some 40,000 airplanes change hands each year. Those buyers face a plethora of new and sometimes confusing terms: smooth limits, TBO, NDH, Bluebook value, SMOH, compression check, lien, amortization. Who ya gonna call? AOPA's Aviation Services Division. About 60 percent of the 100,000 calls the department receives annually relate to aircraft ownership issues. Many of them are from pilots with questions about buying airplanes.
As an aid to prospective buyers, we've devoted much of this issue of AOPA Pilot to the subject of "buying in." On the following 50 pages, we've attempted to answer many of the most common questions buyers have and also to share with you the experiences of some who have been there before.
As novelist Stephen Coonts relates, aircraft ownership is a rewarding and unique adventure experienced by some pilots and dreamed about by all. — Thomas B. Haines
