Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here. Trust the Process, Not the Promises.™

​

PrivateJetBS | Edition 33

The Myth That’s Costing Buyers Millions
—
And Two More the Market Refuses to Let Die

I asked one question on X last month: What’s the one aircraft-buying myth you wish would die?

1,204 views. Countless replies and conversations. Every single one worth its own newsletter.

But one rose above the rest — 182 views and a comment thread that proved my point better than I could have written it myself. So that’s the lead today. Two more follow. Read all three, because odds are you’ve believed at least one of them.

Myth #1: “If I know the seller or the dealer, I don’t need a prebuy.”

This is the one. The most dangerous four words in aviation transactions aren’t “as-is, where-is.” They’re “I trust him.”

Here’s the comment that started it, from BowTiedCFI (@BowTiedCFI): “If you know the seller/dealer you don’t need to do a prebuy on it.”

I understand the instinct. You’ve done three deals with this guy. He’s never burned you. He picks up the phone. Relationship capital in this industry is REAL, and I’ve built my career on it. But relationship capital is not a borescope, and it is not a logbook audit, and it is not an avionics functional test.

Here’s what a prebuy actually is: it’s not a referendum on the seller’s character. It’s a referendum on the airplane’s condition on the day title transfers to you. Those are two completely different questions, and conflating them is how buyers end up owning a $9 million paperweight with an AD compliance gap nobody caught because “we’ve known each other for years.”

I’ve watched this exact myth play out on both sides of the table:

• The seller who didn’t know. A dealer sells an airplane he’s genuinely proud of, genuinely believes is clean, and the prebuy turns up unforeseen findings that the seller had no idea existed. Relationship intact. Airplane still needed $1M in repairs before anyone would insure it.
• The buyer who skipped it. A buyer waives the prebuy on a jet from a dealer he’d done a few prior deals with. Eighteen months later, an engine event traces back to a maintenance shortcut that a proper inspection would have flagged in a day. The dealer didn’t lie. He just didn’t know either — because nobody knows everything about an airplane until a qualified inspection team crawls through it with instruments.

The myth survives because most of the time, nothing goes wrong. Most airplanes sold on trust are fine. That’s exactly why the myth is dangerous — it’s reinforced by every deal that doesn’t blow up, right up until the one that does.

The process doesn’t care how well you know the seller, or their broker. It cares whether the logbooks reconcile, whether the AD/SB compliance is documented, whether the engines are tracked to the hour, and whether an independent set of eyes with no stake in the outcome signed off on all of it. That’s not paranoia. That’s underwriting.

Trust the seller all you want. Verify the airplane anyway.

Myth #2: “If I wait a year, the market will be better for me.”

Chad Trautvetter (@AIN_SkyWriter) — who covers this market for a living — nailed the diagnosis: “This applies to both buyers and sellers. Definition of a fence sitter, too.”

He’s right, and it’s worth sitting with why. This myth is seductive because it’s sometimes true in hindsight and never knowable in advance. Markets move. Rates shift. Inventory cycles. Someone, somewhere, will always be able to point backward and say “see, I was right to wait.” Survivorship bias doesn’t care that ten other buyers waited and paid more a year later, or missed the airplane entirely because it sold to someone who wasn’t waiting.

Here’s the part fence-sitters don’t want to hear: waiting isn’t a strategy. It’s the absence of one. A real strategy has a thesis — “I’m waiting because bonus depreciation phases down and I want to close before the deadline,” or “I’m waiting because three CL3500s I’m tracking are about to hit the market and I want optionality.” Those are decisions. “I’ll wait and see what happens” is not a decision. It’s outsourcing your timeline to a market that has no idea you exist.

And the myth cuts both directions, which is what makes Chad’s comment so sharp. Sellers do it too — holding an airplane off market for “just a little longer” waiting for a number that was never guaranteed, watching depreciation and holding costs eat the gap they were trying to protect.

The process I run with clients isn’t “buy now” or “wait.” It’s: define your mission, define your budget, define your timeline — and then let the market tell you when the right airplane shows up, instead of you trying to predict the market. The right CL3500 or G280 doesn’t wait for your theory about next year to resolve itself.

Were you forwarded the PrivateJetBS Newsletter?​ ​ Subscribe Here!

​

Myth #3: “I can fly for free by putting it on charter.”

This one got personal fast. John Farrish (@jfarrish11) — who handles the legal side of many deals for me — dropped it, and I’ll admit my first reaction in the thread was “I love this!!!” Not because it’s true. Because it’s one of the most persistent, most expensive fantasies in the entire industry.

Charter offset is real. It works. It is not free.

Here’s the math nobody puts on the brochure: management fees, crew costs that don’t disappear just because a charter customer is in the seat, positioning legs, wear-and-tear that accelerates maintenance reserves, and — critically — the tax and insurance complexity of mixing Part 91 personal use with Part 135 commercial operation. Every dollar of charter revenue that comes in gets measured against every dollar of cost that revenue generates. For the right owner with the right utilization profile, offset can meaningfully soften the ownership cost curve. For the owner who bought into “free,” it becomes a second job managing a business you didn’t intend to run.

The myth persists because charter brokers and management companies have every incentive to lead with the upside. Unfortunately, some of those upsides are not matched with realistic data. I don’t blame the operators — that’s their pitch — and offset IS real, but on a case-by-case basis . My job is different. My job is to run the actual numbers on your Specific mission, your Specific utilization, and your Specific tax position (with proper advisor assistance) before you ever sign a management agreement, so “charter offset” is a line item in a real financial model instead of a rumor you heard at an FBO or at the Golf Club.

Free doesn’t exist in aviation. Offset does. Know the difference before you buy the airplane, not after the first 1099 shows up.

The Thread Underneath All Three

Every myth on this list has the same DNA: it’s a shortcut that feels like sophistication. Skip the prebuy because you’re plugged in. Skip the decision because you’re patient. Skip the real math because someone mentioned “free.” Each one lets a buyer or seller feel like they’re playing the game at a higher level while actually just skipping the parts of the process that protect them.

That’s the whole reason this newsletter exists. Not to tell you what to promise yourself about the deal. To tell you what the process actually requires — every time, regardless of who you know, how long you’ve waited, or what a charter brochure says.

Got a myth you want debunked next month? Reply to the thread. I read every one.

— Michael Barber
​
​The Super-Midsize Broker | CL3500 · G280 | IADA Certified (1 of 235 worldwide)jetAVIVA

Trust the Process, Not the Promises.™​
​

Michael Barber PrivateJetBS Newsletter ​Managing Director & VP, Sales Operations at jetAVIVA​ Mobile, WhatsApp, & Signal: +1.919.475.8506 ​​​​

​

Want more industry insights? Subscribe to the PrivateJetBS newsletter for exclusive updates and expert tips on buying, selling, and owning private jets.