If you don’t, it could cost you money in the long run. Even in the brisk high-priced used aircraft sales climate, ones that are light on paperwork and missing maintenance logbook entries take a sizable hit in value. In some cases it could be as much as 50 percent or more. Even so, it always amazes me when owners take a cavalier attitude when it comes to missing logs and even paperwork related to STC modifications, upgrades and AD compliance.
A friend who was ready to spend a lot of dough on a big piston single called me at the last hour to ask if it mattered that there was no supporting paperwork for a major avionics upgrade that was installed in the aircraft a few years prior. It included an S-TEC autopilot, a couple of Garmin IFR GPS navigators and an ADS-B system. That’s a lot of paperwork to go missing and chances are it was either left at the shop (no longer in business) or the owner never put the paperwork in the aircraft. A sharp mechanic doing the prepurchase evaluation spotted it and told my friend that technically the aircraft wasn’t airworthy without it and he was correct. This supporting paperwork can be time-consuming and costly to reproduce.