Pricing your aircraft to sell
Most owners research the market by reading other people's asking prices — which are opening positions, not outcomes. That is how a seller ends up anchored above where the market clears, spends five months finding out, and sells lower than if they had priced it properly on day one.
Asking price is not market value
Market value is where comparable aircraft actually change hands. Asking price is where you open — market value plus a deliberate amount of negotiating headroom. The reason these get conflated is structural: asking prices are published and transaction prices generally are not, so an owner researching their type reads a page of opening positions and calibrates to those.
Do that across a whole segment and the visible market drifts above where it clears. Every seller anchors on every other seller's ask, the aircraft that actually transact do so quietly at lower numbers, and the ones benchmarked to the public asks sit — which is precisely the pattern you can see in any category where inventory is building.
The practical consequence for you is that your asking price has one job: to get you onto shortlists. It cannot win a negotiation you were never invited to. A number set far above the segment does not get negotiated down — it gets filtered out by buyers screening the category, and you never hear from them.
Market value
Where your type, at your age, hours, programme status and condition, actually transacts today. Derived from real outcomes and adjusted for your aircraft's specifics. It is a range, never a figure.
Asking price
Market value plus deliberate headroom. Its only job is to put you on shortlists while leaving a buyer somewhere to move. Set it by the segment's norms, not by what you need the aircraft to be worth.
What you'll actually net
Sale price, less sell-side fees, less any airworthiness items you agree to correct after inspection, less the carrying cost of every month it did not sell. Model the net, not the headline — the headline is not the number that reaches you.
Model your net proceedsEight things buyers are actually pricing
Roughly in order of how much they move a turbine aircraft's number. Directions are indicative — the magnitude depends entirely on your type and its market.
Engine and APU programme enrolment
On turbine aircraft this is frequently the single largest line item after the airframe itself. An aircraft on a comprehensive programme transfers a known, funded maintenance position to the buyer; one off programme transfers an unfunded liability they have to price defensively. Buyers discount the uncertainty more heavily than the arithmetic strictly justifies, because they are pricing risk as well as cost.
Records completeness
Complete, organised, indexed records are worth real money; an unexplained logbook gap is worth real money in the other direction, and the discount lands hardest when the buyer's inspector finds it rather than when you disclose it. This is the factor most within your control and the one most often left until a buyer asks.
Time remaining to major inspection or overhaul
A buyer is pricing the aircraft plus the cost of the next big event. Fresh out of a major event, you are selling the inspection as well as the aircraft; approaching one, the buyer is deducting it in full and usually adding contingency. Where you sit in that cycle can matter more than a couple of hundred hours of total time.
Damage history
Properly repaired, fully documented damage is a smaller discount than most owners fear — and a far smaller one than damage that surfaces during inspection with incomplete paperwork. Disclosure early, with the repair documentation attached, converts an unknown into a known, and buyers price knowns more kindly.
Avionics generation
Current-generation avionics with the required mandates satisfied widen the buyer pool, because a buyer facing an upgrade is facing both the cost and the downtime. Note that avionics upgrades rarely return their full cost at sale — the value is in salability and speed, not in recovering the invoice.
Total time relative to age
It is the ratio, not the raw number, that buyers read. Low time for the age suggests light use but can raise questions about how it was stored and cycled; high time for the age reads as commercial utilisation and shortens the runway to the next major event. Extremes in either direction narrow the buyer pool.
Paint and interior
The weakest financial lever on this list and the strongest psychological one. Fresh paint rarely returns what it cost, but a tired cabin makes a buyer read every other item in the file more suspiciously. Detailing and small cosmetic fixes are usually worth doing; a full refurbishment purely to sell usually is not.
Time already spent on the market
The one nobody puts on the list, and it compounds. An aircraft buyers have watched sit since spring is priced as an aircraft nobody wanted, regardless of why it sat. This is the real cost of opening at a number chosen to test the market.
An indicative value range, in two minutes
Class-typical assumptions, all editable, with a transparent method. Treat the output as the starting point of your thinking rather than the end of it — then adjust for the eight levers above.
Your aircraft
Edit any field — the estimate updates instantly.
A precise, defensible valuation
The range above is indicative. A precise, aircraft-specific valuation — built on verified market data and recent comparable transactions, with a five-year residual projection and a client- and lender-ready report — is prepared for our members and partners.
Precise point valuation
Aircraft-specific, on verified market data
Residual-value projection
5-year forward value curve
Comparable transactions
Recent sales of the same type
Downloadable valuation report
Client- and lender-ready PDF
An account shows cost per flight hour and annual cost. Membership adds the five-year ROI, financing, charter economics, NPV/IRR and report exports.
This is indicative, not an appraisal. It works from transparent, class-typical assumptions, which is why every input is editable and the result is a band. A precise, aircraft-specific valuation — built on your actual programme status, records and recent comparable transactions, in a form you can put in front of a lender or a board — is prepared once we talk. See our methodology or the full valuation calculator.
Pricing an aircraft for sale: FAQs
What is the difference between asking price and market value?
Market value is where comparable aircraft actually transact. Asking price is where you open the conversation — market value plus a deliberate amount of negotiating headroom. The two get confused because asking prices are the visible numbers and transaction prices generally are not, so sellers researching the market end up benchmarking against other people's opening positions rather than against real outcomes. That is how a whole segment drifts above where it clears.
How much should I leave for negotiation?
Enough that a buyer feels they achieved something, and not so much that serious buyers filter you out before making contact. The failure mode is not a small ask that leaves money on the table — it is a large ask that keeps the aircraft off shortlists entirely, because buyers screening a category simply exclude the outlier. You cannot negotiate with someone who never called. The right headroom depends on the type, its condition and how thin the buyer pool is, which is exactly what an experienced read on your segment gives you.
Should I price high and come down later?
It is the most common strategy and it has a cost that is easy to miss, because the cost arrives later than the decision. Opening high buys you a few weeks of optionality, then leaves you reducing in public. Every reduction tells the market the previous number was wrong, and the accumulated time on market is itself priced in — an aircraft that has been listed since spring is discounted for having been listed since spring. Pricing near the market from day one, with modest headroom, generally nets more and takes less time.
What is my aircraft worth?
Value comes from type, age, total time relative to what is normal for that age, engine and APU programme status and time remaining, avionics generation, damage history, records completeness, and current demand for the type — and it is genuinely a range rather than a figure. Our free valuation calculator gives an indicative range from transparent, class-typical assumptions, and it is a reasonable starting point. A precise, aircraft-specific number needs verified data on your particular aircraft.
Do upgrades increase the sale price?
Rarely by what they cost, and that is the wrong question to ask of them. Current avionics and satisfied mandates mostly widen the buyer pool and shorten the time to sale rather than raise the ceiling price. The exception is anything affecting airworthiness or a looming mandate — clearing those removes a hard objection rather than adding a soft benefit, and hard objections are what stop a sale.
Should I publish my asking price?
That depends on what you are optimising for. A published price filters enquiries efficiently and is normal on lower-value aircraft. On higher-value aircraft many sellers prefer 'price on application', both because it preserves negotiating position and because the asking price is itself information about you. HangarMart does not publish pricing publicly at all — sellers are introduced privately to matched buyers, and disclosure is your decision at each stage.
Get a read on your segment, not just your aircraft
Where your type is trading, how deep the buyer pool is right now, and what headroom makes sense. Model, year and hours is enough to start — no tail number, no agreement.