New airplane owners lament to me that they were taught nothing about the process of buying, owning and maintaining an aircraft when they learned to fly. Accordingly, their aircraft ownership education came through the back alleys, as it were. The quality and thoroughness of that tuition made for some expensive mistakes—now they are constantly looking for good information to keep from making bad purchases. They want to know the rules.
So, at the start of a new year, it’s time for a big-picture list of some of the hard-learned rules for an aviation consumer. Ignore them at your peril. When the cost of flying is high, the first thing owners scrimp on is main-tenance—then they realize they can’t afford the airplane and put it on the market. Despite the fact that pilots are generally pretty nice people, there is a painfully high level of misrepre- sentation of the condition of used airplanes.