Pre-Purchase Inspection (PPI)

A pre-purchase inspection is an independent examination of an aircraft — airframe, engines, systems, logbooks, airworthiness-directive compliance and damage history — carried out at a neutral facility before closing. It is the single most valuable spend in a purchase: what it finds is your leverage to renegotiate, require repairs, or walk away.

Why it matters: the pre-purchase inspection is the single most important risk control in an aircraft transaction. It is the buyer's one structured opportunity, before money changes hands, to discover what the aircraft and its records actually are — and it routinely uncovers findings worth many multiples of its cost.

Insist on an independent facility of the buyer's choosing, not the seller's shop, and give records the same scrutiny as metal: gaps, inconsistencies and undocumented repairs discount value as surely as corrosion. The findings then drive the close — negotiate airworthiness items, price the rest deliberately.