Articles on buying & selling aircraft

Are you eligible to own an aircraft registered in the United States? The United States Code (or “U.S.C.”) enacted by the U.S. Congress establishes the ownership requirements for civil aircraft registered in the United States. A U.S. registered...

Every year as the summer draws to an end I do my best to prepare for the crush of 4th quarter closings. I expect 2024 to be a particularly interesting 4th quarter. First, in a presidential election year, transaction volume slows immediately prior to...

On May 15, 2024, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 was passed by Congress and has now been sent to the President for signature. The bill allocates funds in the amount of $105 billion and covers a period of 5 years. The bill itself is over 1,000...

As an aircraft owner, there may be opportunities to lease your aircraft on an exclusive basis. This can happen with a Part 135 charter company or to an individual or company who needs temporary access to an aircraft, usually because their aircraft is...

Over the past 12 months I have had a significant increase in calls with jet card holders, membership program participants and fractional owners who have received the upsetting news that their paid and contracted private aviation provider is unable to...

When I began my career in the aviation industry 25 years ago, the “life cycle” of private aviation consumers was straightforward and predictable. They sampled private aircraft travel by chartering, moved into fractional ownership and then...

Since March of 2020, and the onset of the pandemic, our industry has been extraordinarily busy. For the past three-and-a-half years those of us with careers in private aviation have worked tremendously hard fulfilling the needs of our clients. I...

As we enter the 4th quarter, I am reminded that the industry (lenders, escrow agents, brokers, insurance agents, trust companies and attorneys) will once again be working to close as many aircraft purchases and sales as possible before the end of the...

When purchasing an aircraft, it is important to focus not only on acquiring the aircraft but also, developing an operational plan, which includes aircraft management. If the aircraft is going to be used for charter, then a charter management company...

During the pandemic, private aviation boomed and many private aviation providers flourished. With the private aviation market normalizing, some of the companies who launched their businesses during the past three years or were struggling prior to the...

As an aircraft owner, it is important to make sure the title of your aircraft remains clear. Unlike some other countries, in the United States we have an owner-based registry where liens can be filed against the aircraft by anyone. Since a notice of...

For nearly 3 years we have been in a seller’s market. I often think of the aircraft market as a clock’s pendulum. It swings back and forth between being a buyer’s market or a sellers’ market and sometimes for long periods of time rests in or around...

The most common first step in the acquisition of an aircraft is for one of the parties, usually the buyer, to prepare and submit a letter of intent (“LOI”) to the other party. The main reason for using an LOI is to express each party’s understanding...

On November 22, 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the direct final rule in response to the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018. The final rule modifies (i) the duration that certificates of aircraft registration are valid and (ii)...

Effective immediately the FAA Aircraft Registry announced on December 12, 2022 that it was restricting access to ancillary documents at the Registry to only Federal employees and Federal contractors. As a result, access to ancillary documents by...

As we have been rushing through this end of year madness there has been a new sense of urgency due to the scheduled phasedown of bonus depreciation. To be clear, bonus depreciation is not ending on January 1, 2023. There is a scheduled phasedown that...

More often than I would have thought possible, buyers and sellers are motivated by a variety of reasons to close on the purchase and sale of a pre-owned aircraft before the aircraft meets the delivery conditions specified in the aircraft purchase...

For nearly two years we have been in the most significant seller’s pre-owned aircraft market in recent memory and the consequences are beginning to surface in various ways. First, during this unprecedented seller’s market, some buyers, in order to be...