What aircraft should i buy

Some brokers require you to pay for all of their expenses, while others only charge for travel expenses or even no expenses at all. Once you have signed the acquisition agreement it is on to the fun stuff. Unlike real estate, each party, the purchaser and seller, pays the commission or fee of the broker that represents them in the transaction.

Choosing the right aircraft for you is more complicated than you would think and is absolutely critical to your future happiness with your aircraft. Statistically, most aircraft owners keep an aircraft only 3. This is due, in part, to poor initial selection. The cost to acquire an aircraft is not inconsequential. These costs include sales tax, property tax, broker fees, legal fees, tax advisors, pre-purchase maintenance expenses and the money and time to travel to view the prospective aircraft and relocate it to your home base.

Doing this process less often is smart. A reputable broker will help you determine what aircraft best suits your missions. To select an aircraft that meets your needs, you will need to know the answers to the following questions:.

As you can imagine, there is a wide variety of aircraft available today and the goal is to match one to your needs. Below we discuss the different categories of business aircraft, focusing on turboprops and jets. By way of background, everyone in the aircraft world talks of knots and nautical miles 1 knot equals 1.

A turboprop will seat 5 to 9 passengers and fly at speeds ranging from knots to knots. Turboprops are great for to nautical mile trips.

Modern turboprops are extraordinarily reliable and may be operated in all types of weather conditions. Turboprops have some key advantages over jets, particularly the very light and light jet category discussed later. Turboprops also have lower operating costs than jets, have the ability to carry a full load of passengers and luggage for most of their standard mission trips of to 1, nautical miles, are less expensive to maintain over jets and have the ability to takeoff and land at some of the smallest airports.

Their disadvantages include cabin noise levels louder than jets, slightly more vibration from the props and engines, and slower cruise speeds than jets. Turboprops can be operated single pilot while many jets require a crew of two. There have been many manufacturers of twin engine turboprops in the past, but only two twin engine corporate turboprops are currently being manufactured, Beechcraft King Airs and Avanti Piaggios.

The King Air line of aircraft manufactured by Beechcraft is the most popular model line of twin turboprops in production today. They have larger cabins than the very light and light categories of jets discussed below. They are also the most common and come in three main body styles, the C90, the B and The models become larger and faster as you move up the line from the C90 to the The B is one of the most popular business aircraft ever built.

These aircraft are particularly economical to operate compared to the twin-engine models because they have only one engine.

Single engine turboprops use less fuel and the repair and overhaul costs are generally half of the twin turboprops. Nevertheless, single turboprop economics should be balanced with the safety factor of have two engines in the King Air and other twin turboprops. For purposes of discussion here, we will divide jets into 5 categories: 1. There are two very light twin jets that are currently in production, the Cessna Mustang and the Embraer Phenom , with many more are in the works including a few single engine jets.

They seat a maximum of 5 passengers and 1 pilot, but are more practically flown with 4 passengers. Their range is between to 1, nautical miles, depending on load, and they fly from to knots. Annual operating expenses are slightly more than turboprops. They are generally flown with one pilot. Light jets generally carry 5 to 7 passengers and cruise to knots and can fly to 1, nautical miles. That's why, even as companies like NetJets and Wheels Up try to convince fliers to buy fractional shares of planes , the wholly owned private aircraft remains a viable product.

Here are the most exciting, appealing, or flat-out audacious models — available now or soon enough to place a preorder. For many pilots, the Cessna Skycatcher isn't the plane you buy; it's the one that teaches you to fly. The single piston-engine model is a popular trainer, with extremely beginner-friendly Garmin -built avionics — much of the instrumentation is displayed on dual monitors — and just enough seating for a student and a wary instructor.

But the Skycatcher is the cheapest or close to it light sport aircraft LSA on the market, part of a relatively new class of small planes that make general aviation more obtainable than ever. The limited range makes it a bad fit for most business travelers, but a perfect choice for those who simply want to soar.

It's okay to want a plane that looks and functions like a G. Joe vehicle come to life. Not that the Icon A5 is a toy, but its undeniably nifty, with its retractable wings, water landing capability, and unique design — the single engine is mounted behind the two-seat carlike cockpit. Along with useful LSA options such as a full-plane parachute, the A5 can dispense entirely with the need for a runway. By having the landing gear removed, it becomes a seaplane, taking off and landing on water, and docking like a small to midsize boat.

The Cessna TTx is the airborne equivalent of a high-performance luxury sedan, boasting the fastest maximum cruise speed of any single-engine piston — knots, or roughly mph — and seating for four.

It also has enough range to supplant domestic commercial flights, whether you're flying solo or taking a modest-size group on vacation. The TTx's best feature might be its ESP Electronic Stability and Protection autopilot system, which automatically kicks in if the pilot becomes incapacitated, initiates a stall, or otherwise loses control of the craft.

The Beechcraft Bonanza is a single-engine piston that has been around longer than any other — it's been in constant production in one form or another since But Beechcraft has also steadily upgraded it along the way, so while it's still an ultrareliable workhorse, with seating for up to six, the most recent iteration has a higher-visibility glass wraparound windscreen and the kind of touchscreen-centric Garmin avionics that, according to JA Air's Scott Fank, is the single biggest draw of small-plane features for new pilots, who've likely never flown with older, purely analog instrumentation.

If the amphibious A5 is a would-be G. Or it will be, if Cirrus can get a model ready next year for flight certification and stay on track for first deliveries in It would also create its own category, what Cirrus is calling the Personal Jet, with enough pep knots to satisfy performance fanatics and enough seating for the whole family up to five adults and two children. How short or how long? Hint: most lightplane owners take the airlines when they fly transcontinental distances.

How many people will you typically be carrying? Hint: the typical occupancy of light planes is similar to what it is in automobiles: somewhere between one and two people. How much cargo will you typically be carrying? How fast do you need to cruise? Hint: a turbocharged retractable-gear airplane might cost twice as much to fly as a normally-aspirated fixed-gear one, yet cut only 15 minutes off the typical trip time.

A Case In Point A couple whose primary mission is to visit their kids or their weekend cabin at thelake needs to make very different choices from a bush pilot who needs to haul hunters andtheir trophies into and out of gravel strips, or a salesman who needs to visit customersthroughout an eight state area in all kinds of weather.

Lookat my situation, for example. I fly at least two or three transcontinental trips a year inmy airplane. In August, I usually fly to Oshkosh. Every year ortwo, I visit family in Boston. More than half of my flying hours involve long over 1,NM trips like this. So the knot cruise speed of my Cessna TR and its all-weathercapability are almost essential to me. On the other hand, the six-seat capacity of my airplane is really a waste. I veryseldom carry more that two people myself and my wife, or myself and a colleague.

Norhave I found the extra engine to be an essential. These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate.

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