As a prospective aircraft buyer in the olden days, my first steps would include asking airport acquaintances for leads, scouring classified ads in the newspaper, Trade-A-Plane, and other such resources, and visiting my local aircraft seller. Today, however, it's possible to find an airplane, arrange for its prepurchase inspection, apply for financing, and close the deal all via World Wide Web.
I thought it'd be fun to shop for an airplane via the Internet - to see just how close I could come to finding my "dream airplane." For all the differences in technology, my strategy for finding the airplane will be surprisingly similar to a "paper" search. Today, with the electron-fast Internet at my fingertips, I'll fly a virtually identical course to yesteryear.
The Internet is a powerful tool for finding things - cars, people, airplanes, nearby pizza shops - and it's wonderful when you know what you're looking for, or at least how you're going to look for it. But looking for something without a research strategy can suction time faster than, well, spending an afternoon browsing the Web. There are - literally - hundreds of places to look out there in the World Wide Haystack, and without a search plan, an airplane becomes a virtual needle.
To make the most of the Internet, my search strategy could include one or all of three steps - posting messages on usenet bulletin boards, using search engines to find aircraft brokers, and logging onto one of several classified listings of aircraft for sale. Even with a strategy, you'll find yourself inundated with possible sites, just as I did. Consequently, by no means does this story constitute a complete list of useful airplane-buying sites.
Using The Net
If you're a subscriber to America Online or CompuServe, you've probably already lurked or posted messages on aviation forums or aircraft owner boards. Usenets and bulletin boards serve much the same purpose as a trip to the airport - to network with other aircraft owners.
You'll probably find someone who has owned the make and model you're looking for. That person may be able to point out problem areas for the fine-toothed comb treatment during your pre-purchase inspection. He or she may be able to help estimate the cost of operation and determine a fair purchase price. He may even have a lead on an aircraft for sale. Even after you find your airplane, you'll probably want to stick around the bulletin boards - particularly when it comes time to sell.
Check into sites such as rec.aviation.marketplace, rec.aviation.owning, CompuServe's AvSig, or AOL's aviation forum. The subscription services allow you to read both their own forums and Internet usenets. If you're only paying for Internet access, you'll need to set your browser to log onto newsgroups. If you've never done it before, call your service provider or ask a knowledgeable friend to help set up the reader.
Spreading A Web
My first stop on the Web are aviation hubs, such as Landings (www.landings.com). I'm looking for dealers who may have what I'm looking for or who can get it. At Landings, I've found a laundry list of links to aircraft sales companies - dealerships that will happily match me to an airplane. The advantage of the Web over newsgroups is the Web's ability to show pictures. If you found an airplane in a newsgroup, a picture would have to be sent to you either by snail-mail or e-mail.
The Landings site, my first stop, is composed primarily of international dealers. It's a directory of companies that sell anything from light singles in Arizona to Learjets in Copenhagen. With a couple of hundred links, it would take some time to find my airplane going one-by-one, so I'll only check into a couple of sites - ones that grab my attention.
I stop by the Exotic Aircraft Co.'s site (www.barnstormers.com), which is part of Landing's link list. The company offers an extensive listing that includes warbirds, antique aircraft, aviation collectibles, and other merchandise such as B-29 Superfortress magneto switches. And yes, several Cessna 170s are listed for sale in this site's Cessna 170 bulletin board, but there are also quite a few people looking for airplanes here. I probably should leave a message myself. Incidentally, peppered throughout the listing are testimonials from people who have located airplanes with the site - apparently, Internet commerce works.
That done, I'll click to my favorite search engine - you may choose Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, Hotbox, or any other that suits your fancy - and search for "airplane sales", "aircraft for sale", "airplane listing", or some such keyword combination. I tried several and found a heaping helping of Web sites intent on matching my demand to someone else's supply. What I quickly find is there is a wide range - both in quality and quantity - of information available online.
With a search engine, you'll find individual dealers around the country as well as classified-type listings of airplanes, such as Trade-A-Plane's Web site. Individual dealers usually have a smaller listing. Again, it's like walking into an aircraft sales office at your local airport.
Sorting It Out
If dealer listings let you shop in a specific area, many classified listings let you in to power shop. The beauty of these listings is their searchability - you can find all single-engine aircraft listed between $20,000 and $30,000, for example, which implies you already know what you want or what you want to pay. Yet, classified sites vary in their number of listings.
With 5,000 airplanes plus engines, avionics, and other items, Trade-A-Plane's www.tradeaplane.com is probably the largest direct, online listing of general aviation products, but with quantity comes price. Whereas most online listings make the seller buy the ad, to search www.tradeaplane.com you must subscribe to it, unless you're already a Trade-a-Plane subscriber - $2.95 per month (with a three-month minimum) or $29 per year.
If you don't want to pay, you have other options. A leaner, straight-forward service, www.ooigui.com, includes links to aircraft-ownership newsgroups, a loan calculator, a listing of airplanes that have attracted the most browsers, and a listing, by make, of all airplanes advertised on the site. No luck with 170s.
I have better fortune at Wings Online (www.wingsonline.com). It produces three 170s - one in Maine, one in Texas, and one in Ontario. This site includes a database of aircraft for sale that allows you to search by aircraft type, location, price, dealer, and recency of listing. It will even e-mail you new listings daily, and it, too, includes bulletin boards with "airplane wanted" postings and information on financing, inspections, and insurance.
Airshow (www.airshow.net) is a hub of aviation dealers. (I actually stumbled across this site two ways - with my search engine and from Landings - because several of the independent dealers listed on www.landings.com are part of the Airshow network.) You can search Airshow by state, kind of aircraft, price, year of manufacture, and special characteristics. It also allows quick search on Bonanzas, Cherokees, Cessna 172s, and Mooneys, providing a list of those popular models for sale. All Airshow sites allow shoppers to request more information about a particular airplane and request individual dealers to "keep an eye out" for something more to your liking. I find one 170 in California.
My last stop is the Aircraft Shopper Online (www.aso.com) a network of aircraft dealers that sell anything from heavy iron to ultralights. It also allows me to power search - make, model, year, price, time on airframe, and recency of ad. It produces a very nice Cessna 170B.
I think I've got something to go on now. Because I've seen pictures of several of these, I would communicate with the owner next. The Internet allows me to do that, too - with e-mail.
Keep in mind that the Web is international - check the address of your newly realized dream airplane before you sell the kids and mortgage the house. That Mooney in London may be hard to get across the pond, and the Cessna 195 in Australia may be - literally - beyond your reach.
But that's the beauty of the Internet - access to information that otherwise wouldn't be available to the unwired set. While the Web is almost overwhelming - and it can be a handful - it's a tool that works well when a strategy, no matter how simple, is employed.
I wonder if that grass strip has a Web page. I'm thinking a t-hangar.
