Arrange financing and insurance
Get quoted before you shop, not after you find the airplane. Insurance in particular may require training you do not have yet — and that changes what you are allowed to buy.
- Time
- About a week
- Cost
- Free to quote
Two phone calls early will save you from falling in love with an airplane you cannot insure or finance. Make them before you start travelling to look at aircraft.
Insurance decides what you are allowed to buy
This surprises first-time buyers more than anything else in the process. An underwriter looks at your total time, your time in type, your ratings, and the airplane’s characteristics — retractable gear, high performance, twin, tailwheel, turbine — and then quotes you, quotes you with conditions, or declines.
Conditions are common and they are not negotiable. A low-time pilot buying a complex single may be required to complete a set number of dual hours with an instructor in type before flying it alone, including on the flight home. Budget for it and schedule it — an airplane you are not yet cleared to fly is an expensive lawn ornament.
Financing looks at the airplane more than at you
Aircraft lenders care about the collateral. Airframe age, engine time remaining, damage history and logbook completeness drive the terms as much as your credit does. Older airframes and run-out engines get shorter terms, larger down payments, or a flat decline — worth knowing before you make an offer on a 1968 airplane with a mid-time engine.
Expect to put real money down. Terms move with the market, so get a current quote rather than trusting a number from a forum post, but plan on a meaningful deposit and a term shorter than a house and longer than a car.
Something that reads as getting your affairs in order without being a stock handshake — a desk with a logbook, a laptop showing a quote, aircraft keys. Avoid the suited-man-beside-a-jet look; this audience is allergic to it. Our current photo for this step is exactly that look and should be replaced.
- Get an insurance quote for the specific type before you shop for one
- Ask what training the quote requires, and budget the hours and the instructor
- Use an aviation insurance broker rather than a single carrier
- Ask the lender how airframe age and engine time change the terms