A pre-purchase inspection is the single most important spend before you buy an aircraft. It is also where a good buyer recovers far more than it costs, through price adjustment and escrow holdbacks.
You have agreed a number, signed the letter of intent and wired the deposit into escrow. Then the aircraft flies to a maintenance facility, panels come off, the logbooks are laid out on a table, and a borescope goes down the engine — and what the inspection finds will decide whether the price you agreed is the price you pay, or whether tens of thousands of dollars quietly move back in your favour. The pre-purchase inspection is the moment the deal is really tested, and the buyer who treats it as a formality is the buyer who overpays.
A pre-purchase inspection, universally shortened to PPI, is an independent technical examination of an aircraft commissioned by the buyer before completing a purchase. It is not a regulatory requirement and it is not the same as a routine maintenance check — it is a due-diligence exercise whose sole purpose is to establish the true condition, airworthiness and records integrity of the machine you are about to own. The scope is negotiated between buyer and seller and written into the aircraft purchase agreement, typically as a schedule defining what will be inspected, what constitutes an airworthiness discrepancy and who bears the cost of rectifying what is found.
The work is carried out at a qualified maintenance, repair and overhaul facility — an MRO — ideally one authorised on the aircraft type but independent of the seller. A buyer’s technical representative oversees the process on your behalf. The distinction that matters is independence: the inspecting facility answers to the buyer, not the seller, and its findings are the factual basis on which the closing price and any holdbacks are settled. A PPI done properly is adversarial in the healthiest sense — it exists to find problems while you can still act on them, before the wire is released and the aircraft is legally yours to fix, at your own expense and with no recourse to the seller who has already banked the proceeds.
A thorough PPI works through the aircraft in layers, from the paperwork to the physical airframe and its engines. The records audit is often the most consequential part: a gap in the logbooks can wipe more value off an aircraft than any dent in the fuselage.
The distinction the schedule must draw is between airworthiness discrepancies — which the seller is normally obliged to correct or fund — and non-airworthiness or cosmetic items, which become negotiating currency rather than automatic seller obligations.
A PPI is carried out at an MRO qualified on the type, and location matters: the aircraft must be ferried there, which itself carries cost and can surface issues in flight. The buyer’s representative attends throughout. Duration depends on the depth of the inspection agreed and the size of the aircraft, but a light jet PPI commonly runs several days to a week, a midsize aircraft one to two weeks, and a large-cabin or long-range jet two to three weeks or more where structural access and systems testing are extensive.
That elapsed time is real downtime with a real owner — the seller’s aircraft is out of service, which is one reason sellers push to constrain scope and buyers must resist constraining it too far. Findings can extend the timeline: if the borescope or records audit turns something up, rectification, re-inspection and re-negotiation add days or weeks. A well-drafted purchase agreement anticipates this with defined inspection windows, a mechanism for handling discovered discrepancies, and a deposit held in escrow that is refundable if the aircraft fails to meet the agreed delivery condition. Rushing the PPI to protect a delivery date is the most expensive economy in the entire transaction, and a seasoned buyer would rather forfeit a slot than sign for an aircraft the inspection has not been allowed to finish examining.
The convention is straightforward and heavily in the buyer’s interest to understand. The buyer pays for the inspection itself — the MRO’s labour, the technical representative and the ferry costs. The seller, however, typically pays to correct airworthiness discrepancies the inspection uncovers, because the standard obligation is to deliver the aircraft airworthy and in the agreed condition. This split is why the PPI is the best-value spend in the deal: the buyer funds the discovery, but the seller funds much of the cure.
Findings translate into money through three mechanisms. First, airworthiness items are corrected at the seller’s cost before closing, or their cost is deducted from the purchase price. Second, discovered issues become leverage to re-open the agreed number — a records gap, an engine not on programme, or corrosion can justify a material price reduction. Third, where an item cannot be resolved before the closing date, the parties agree an escrow holdback: an amount retained from the seller’s proceeds in the escrow account against the cost of completing the work, released only when it is done. A holdback protects the buyer from paying in full for an aircraft that is not yet in the condition promised, and it keeps the seller motivated to see the outstanding work completed properly rather than walking away with the money in hand.
PPI cost scales with aircraft size, complexity and the depth of inspection agreed. The figures below are indicative US-dollar ranges for the inspection itself — MRO labour, technical representation and typical incidentals — and exclude ferry costs and the cost of rectifying anything found. They are planning ranges, not quotes; a light records audit on a well-kept aircraft sits at the bottom, a deep structural inspection with acceptance flight at the top.
| Aircraft class | Indicative PPI cost (US$) | Typical elapsed time | Common depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light jet | $15,000 – $35,000 | 3 – 7 days | Records, borescope, systems |
| Midsize jet | $30,000 – $60,000 | 1 – 2 weeks | Adds deeper structural access |
| Super-midsize jet | $45,000 – $80,000 | 1.5 – 2 weeks | Full systems & acceptance flight |
| Large-cabin / long-range | $75,000 – $150,000+ | 2 – 3+ weeks | Extensive structure & avionics |
Set against a purchase price running from several million to well over fifty million dollars, even the top of this range is a small fraction of the transaction — and routinely returns a multiple of itself in price adjustment and holdbacks. The false economy is skipping depth to save a five-figure sum on a purchase measured in tens of millions, only to discover an undocumented repair or a lapsed engine programme after closing, when there is no longer a seller obliged to put it right.
The value of a PPI is set before the aircraft ever reaches the hangar, in how the inspection schedule and purchase agreement are drafted. A buyer who leaves scope vague, or who lets the seller nominate the facility, has surrendered the advantage the process is meant to provide.
Handled with discipline, the PPI stops being a box to tick and becomes the instrument through which you buy the aircraft you were actually promised, at a price the evidence supports. The buyers who lose money on used aircraft are almost never the ones who spent too much on inspection; they are the ones who trusted the paperwork and skipped the borescope.
We commission and oversee pre-purchase inspections through a private network of independent, type-qualified MROs and technical representatives, entirely on the buyer’s side and under NDA. We draft the inspection scope, read the findings against the purchase agreement, and translate a records gap, an off-programme engine or an airworthiness discrepancy into a lower closing price or an escrow holdback — so you complete on the aircraft you were promised, at a number the evidence supports.
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Indicatively, a light jet PPI runs about US$15,000–$35,000, a midsize jet $30,000–$60,000, and a large-cabin or long-range aircraft $75,000–$150,000 or more. These cover the inspection itself and exclude ferry costs and rectification of anything found. Against a multi-million-dollar purchase, it is a small fraction that routinely pays for itself.
A full records and logbook audit, verification of AD and Service Bulletin compliance, damage and corrosion history, an engine borescope and confirmation of hourly-programme standing such as CorporateCare, ESP or TAP, plus avionics, systems and interior condition. The schedule distinguishes airworthiness discrepancies, which the seller normally cures, from cosmetic items that become negotiating currency.
The buyer pays for the inspection itself — the MRO labour, the technical representative and ferry costs. The seller typically pays to correct airworthiness discrepancies the inspection uncovers, because the standard obligation is to deliver the aircraft airworthy and in the agreed condition. That split is why the PPI is the best-value spend in the transaction.
A light jet inspection commonly runs several days to a week, a midsize aircraft one to two weeks, and a large-cabin jet two to three weeks or more. The aircraft is out of service throughout, and findings that require rectification and re-inspection can extend the timeline further, which is why fixed inspection windows are written into the agreement.
When an item cannot be resolved before closing, the parties agree a holdback — an amount retained from the seller’s proceeds in escrow against completing the work, released only when done. More broadly, airworthiness findings are corrected at the seller’s cost or deducted from the price, and records gaps or off-programme engines justify re-opening the agreed number.
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