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PrivateJetBS | Edition 34

The Pre-Purchase Inspection: Who’s Really Working for You?

You’ve found the aircraft. The price is right. The logbooks look clean. Your broker says it’s a great deal. The seller’s team is ready to move.

Everything feels good.

This is exactly when most buyers get hurt.

The pre-purchase inspection is the single most consequential moment in an aircraft transaction. It is also the moment where the alignment or misalignment of incentives is most likely to cost you money, time, or both. And it is the moment that most buyers walk into almost completely blind.

That ends today.

What a PPI Actually Is, And What It Isn’t.

Let’s start with first principles.

A pre-purchase inspection is a comprehensive technical evaluation of an aircraft conducted by an authorized maintenance facility before a transaction closes. The goal, in theory, is simple: an independent, objective assessment of the aircraft’s condition so the buyer can make an informed decision.

In theory.

In practice, a PPI is a negotiation. It is a process with multiple parties, multiple agendas, and money on every side of the table. The inspection report is not a neutral document. It is a product of decisions that were made before the first panel was ever pulled, decisions about who performs the inspection, where it happens, who selects the facility, and who is paying for what.

If you don’t understand those decisions, you don’t understand what you’re reading when the report lands in your inbox.

The Three Questions Every Buyer Should Ask Before the Inspection Starts.

Before an aircraft ever goes into a hangar for a PPI, three questions need answers. Many buyers never ask them. The ones who do are the ones who close with fewer surprises.

1. Who selected the maintenance facility?

This is the most important question in the entire process and the one most frequently glossed over.

If the seller selected the facility, ask why. Not necessarily a conspiracy. Not necessarily bad faith. But, the buyer may experience a structural conflict of interest that no amount of good intentions can fully resolve.

Maintenance facilities have relationships. They have repeat customers. They have business they want to keep. A shop that does regular work for a seller, or for a management company, or for a broker who brings them deals, has a financial incentive to maintain that relationship. That doesn’t mean they’ll falsify a report. It means that when a finding is borderline, when a subjective judgment call has to be made, when something could be written up as a discrepancy or noted as within limits, that relationship is in the room whether anyone acknowledges it or not.

The buyer needs to be involved in the selection of the facility. Full stop. And if your broker isn’t fighting for that right on your behalf, ask yourself why.

2. Who is paying for the inspection?

The convention in most transactions is that the buyer pays a flat rate fee for the PPI. That’s appropriate. It’s your inspection. You commissioned it. You own the result.

But, pay attention to what happens at the margins. If the seller is offering to cover the cost of the inspection as part of deal negotiations, that offer comes with strings, even if no one says so explicitly. The shop knows who wrote the check. The shop knows who might write the next one.

Your inspection. Your money. Your facility. That’s the only configuration that puts you in control.

3. Who is the facility’s primary customer base?

Not all MROs are created equal, and not all of them specialize in the type of aircraft you’re buying. A shop that primarily services Citations may not be the right choice for a Challenger pre-buy. A facility that does high volume on one airframe may have institutional knowledge that benefits you, or institutional relationships that don’t.

Do the homework. Ask your broker. Ask around in the type community. The reputation of the facility doing your inspection matters as much as the reputation of the aircraft itself.

The Scope Problem, And Why It’s Bigger Than You Think.

Here’s something most buyers don’t realize until it’s too late: the scope of a pre-purchase inspection is negotiated.

There is no universal standard for what a PPI must include. There are manufacturer recommendations. There are inspection programs. There are what the FAA requires for continued airworthiness. But the specific scope of your pre-purchase inspection, what gets inspected, how deeply, which systems get evaluated, which records get scrutinized, is a product of negotiation between the buyer, the seller, and the facility.

And that negotiation happens before you sign the Purchase Agreement.

A narrow scope inspection protects the seller. A comprehensive scope inspection protects the buyer. The tension between those two interests plays out in every PPI, on every deal.

What should a thorough PPI scope include? At minimum:

A complete airframe inspection. Engine borescopes (THIS is a whole newsletter topic on its own, check out Episode 16). Avionics functional checks. Landing gear inspection. Control surface inspection. A full review of the maintenance records, not just the logbooks, but the work orders, the deferred items, the AD compliance records, the service bulletin status, both digital and paper. If the aircraft is enrolled in an engine program, a review of enrollment status, payment status, and any pending shop visits. If there’s a known event in the aircraft’s history, a hard landing, a lightning strike, a tail strike, a targeted inspection of the affected area.

If someone is pushing back on any of those items, ask yourself what they’re trying to protect.

The Report Lands.

The inspection is done. The report is in your hands. It’s forty pages long and written in maintenance-speak. Now what?

First: understand that every aircraft has findings. Every single one. A clean PPI report, truly clean with no findings, should actually make you more cautious, not less. Either the scope was too narrow, or the facility isn’t being thorough.

Findings fall into a few categories, and knowing the difference matters:

Airworthiness items are non-negotiable. These are discrepancies that must be corrected before the aircraft can legally fly. They are not negotiating chips. They are not something to handle after closing. They get fixed before the deal closes, period. If a seller won’t commit to that, walk.

Value-affecting items are findings that are legal to fly with but that represent real cost, deferred maintenance, components approaching life limits, service bulletins that haven’t been incorporated. These are legitimate negotiating points. They go into the deal as price adjustments, escrow holds, or seller commitments to repair. Get them in writing.

Cosmetic and minor items are exactly what they sound like. Don’t let them distract you from the material findings, but don't ignore them either.

The mistake most buyers make is treating the entire report as either a catastrophe or an afterthought. Neither serves you. The report is a negotiating document. Work it like one.

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Your Broker’s Role in the PPI, And the Red Flags to Watch For

A good broker earns their commission during the pre-purchase inspection. A bad one costs you far more than their fee.

Here’s what your broker should be doing during a PPI:

They should be advocating for your right to select the facility. They should be helping you define the scope and pushing back if the seller’s team tries to narrow it. They should have a relationship with the facility doing the work, not the seller’s. They should be on the phone with the lead technician when findings come in, not waiting for a PDF summary. They should be translating the findings for you in plain language, ranking them by materiality, and advising you on how to negotiate each one.

And here’s what should make you stop and ask questions:

If your broker selected a facility without asking for your input, ask why. If the facility your broker recommends happens to be one they use repeatedly, ask what that relationship looks like. If findings are coming back and your broker’s first instinct is to minimize them, ask who benefits from this deal closing quickly. If you’re being pressured to accept findings as-is or to waive inspection rights to keep a deal moving, stop. Breathe. Ask the harder question.

A broker who is truly working for you will never pressure you to compromise your inspection. The commission on any aircraft transaction is not worth the liability, legal, financial, or reputational, of a client who buys a problem aircraft because the PPI was rushed, scoped too narrowly, or conducted by the wrong facility.

If your broker is making you feel like you’re being difficult for asking these questions, that’s your answer.

The Seller’s Perspective — Because It Matters Too

This is not a one-sided story. Sellers have legitimate interests in the PPI process too, and understanding them makes you a better negotiator.

A seller wants the inspection to be efficient. They want a qualified facility, a reasonable scope, and a process that doesn’t drag on for weeks while their aircraft is torn apart and their deal hangs in limbo. Those are reasonable positions.

A seller does not want a fishing expedition, an open-ended inspection with no defined scope, conducted by a facility with a reputation for writing up every squawk regardless of materiality. That’s also reasonable.

The best pre-purchase inspections happen when both parties agree on scope upfront, select a mutually acceptable facility with the buyer having final say, and set clear expectations for how findings will be handled before the aircraft ever enters the hangar.

Get that framework established at the letter of intent stage. Not after the aircraft is already on jacks.

The Bottom Line

The pre-purchase inspection is not a formality. It is not a checkbox. It is not something to rush through because the market is tight and you’re afraid someone else is going to take the aircraft.

It is the moment where every assumption you’ve made about the aircraft either gets confirmed or corrected. It is the last line of defense between you and a very expensive problem.

Who selected the facility? Who is paying? What is the scope? Who does your broker actually work for?

Answer those four questions before the inspection starts, not after the report lands and you’re trying to figure out why something that was supposed to be a great deal suddenly doesn’t feel like one.

The aircraft you buy is only as good as the inspection behind it.

Trust the process. All of it. Especially the parts that make the other side uncomfortable.

Trust the Process, Not the Promises.™​
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Michael Barber PrivateJetBS Newsletter ​Managing Director & VP, Sales Operations at jetAVIVA​ Mobile, WhatsApp, & Signal: +1.919.475.8506 ​​​​

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