Choosing the Right Aircraft
December 29, 2011By Chuck Smith and Gary Goltz, Partners C&J Aviation Owning an aircraft is an exciting, liberating and joyful experience. It takes the stress out of travel and can be a valuable business tool, giving you the flexibility and reaction time to compete in today’s fast-paced business environment. However, the joy of aircraft ownership can quickly fade if you don’t go about the acquisition process correctly. The intent of this article is to give you a bird’s eye view of how to properly choose an aircraft that will bring you years of usefuln...
The Aircraft Purchase Process
December 29, 2011The purpose of this article is to take some of the mystery out of the aircraft purchasing process and provide a broad overview of how an aircraft is acquired. Most aircraft acquisitions involve a team of professionals including an aircraft broker, an aircraft mechanic, an aviation attorney, a CPA, an aviation title company and a lender, among others. The process can take a week or a few months, depending on the nature of the transaction. Aircraft Selection First, you select the aircraft type you want, after detailed discussions with your ...
Don't Put Your Client's Shiny New Corporate Jet in to a Sole-Asset LLC...
December 29, 2011(Unless You Really Want to Create an Airline) By David T. Norton © 2005 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED As Published in the April, 2002, edition of the Texas Bar Journal You recently assisted a client in the purchase of a multi-engine jet aircraft for business and personal trips. Not familiar with the regulations regarding the ownership and operation of aircraft in the United States, you simply viewed this as the purchase of any other expensive capital asset. Considering it to have a high potential for civil liability, you decided to create a subsidia...
Why Birds and Flying Don't Mix
April 29, 2007By Gary Goltz (Article & artwork originally appeared in AOPA Pilot, April 2007) It was a cool, spring desert morning at Casa Grande Municipal Airport, a non-towered field located approximately 50 nm south of Phoenix. I was about to embark on the last leg of my first cross-country flight in my newly purchased 1973 Beechcraft Baron. The first three legs of my four-Leg trip from Bartow, Florida, to Camarillo, California, had been flawless. The avionics had worked perfectly, including the older Century III autopilot and the Garmin GNS43...
Useful Links
We’ve compiled a list of manufacturers’ websites, along with links to resources we’ve found useful in the past.
For anyone thinking of buying or selling an airplane, check out the Resources on our website first, but you may also find these sites helpful:
Manufacturer websites:
Cessna (Citation website) — www.cessna.com
Hawker Beechcraft/King Airs — www.hawkerbeechcraft.com
Bombardier (Learjet, Challenger, Global) — www.bombardier.com
Gulfstream — www.gulfstream.com
Embraer — www.embraerexecutivejets.com
Informational links
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — www.faa.gov
National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) — www.nbaa.org
Controller (publicly-available aircraft listings) — www.controller.com
Airnav (airport information and fuel prices) — www.airnav.com
Flight Aware (flight tracking) — www.flightaware.com
FAA Pilots Website — www.pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association — www.aopa.org
Helpful Tools:
Loan Calculator (simple interest loan payment calculator) — www.planningtips.com/cgi-bin/simple.pl
Weather Reports: www.accuweather.com
