The 100k first annual

Sounds pretty normal in GA. Most people don’t do a proper prebuy. What are logs? The market is crazy and most buyers feel they are forced to buy whatever, before somebody snaps it up.

If the guy spent half the time using his head than he spent typing up his predicament on yet another clickbait / advert filled website, he would have saved himself a load of $$$.

I had a ~100k in-warranty avionics replacement bill on a brand new TB20… Socata probably built it with parts returned with intermittent faults.

I think he’s written up his experience pretty reasonably. Since it’s a PA46 he’s not exactly a beginner. The big issue (The spar) won’t stick on the vendor and maybe it is OK anyway. For the rest of it, he’ll have a very nice plane with a 350 Hr engine at the end of it. Maybe he can get some money back from the vendor.

That’s aviation.

“Since it’s a PA46 he’s not exactly a beginner.”
Not a beginner to flying, but probably a beginner to used aircraft buying from a private owner.

Since it’s a PA46 he’s not exactly a beginner.

It is a Saratoga, therefore a PA32

The need for a knowledgeable, and independent pre purchase inspection has never been more important. I recently completed flight testing and approval on a 185 amphibian, which was “airworthy” when offered for sale. The prospective purchaser’s review of the logs, (let alone actually looking at the plane itself) showed some serious concerns with a rebuild, and during our inspection of the plane a year ago now, and my subsequent flight testing “when we thought we had it right” we turned up a few other deficiencies. It was a $125,000 bill to bring the plane to be actually airworthy, before the show would let it out the door. It was ten months from detection of the defects to my approval, and its maintenance release – it’s up for sale again.

One of my maintenance shop clients found a tiny suspected crack in the spar of a cantilever wing C210 – on which we have replaced a corroded center spar a few years ago (big job!). We had the eddy current inspector come up to examine the defect in the spar, and it was a small corrosion spot, not a crack. It was on the very ,limit for being blended out, which repair I also approved.

I have had to do several repair approvals for Piper low wings, which in some cases were the result of poor repairs following hard landing damage. One Piper Arrow I inspected was not worth the repair. It was sold for parts.

Aging aircraft, and defective previous repair concerns are valid, and inspectors are becoming more aware of what to look for. It’s up to prospective purchasers to either make the investment in a good pre purchase inspection, and know the inspection points, or, suck it up, when something pops up later. I probably do at least an approval a year for a special repair for a defect not found during a PPI, which should have been. As said, a couple of times I declined doing an approval, as it would exceed the value of the plane. The C210 was nearly that, but the owner had the money, and loved the plane. I test flew it afterward, it was a sweetheart!

The need for a knowledgeable, and independent pre purchase inspection has never been more important.

This has never changed, because human nature never changes. The issues were known to the seller in nearly all cases.

And human nature ensures that prebuys are mostly not done…

I have heard so many stories, which I can’t post.

I own a 2000 Saratoga model (so somewhat newer than the airplane in the reddit post, which is a SP), so I know these planes well. Just like any other complex airplane, if you don’t look after it properly, it gets messy quickly. I read an interview somewhere with somebody from Bartlett Aviation (US dealer specialized in what looks like the upper end of the PA32 market) that the typical (I took it that this meant well maintained, shiny, all SBs and ADs up to date) Saratoga came to them with $25K worth of squawks

When I looked at mine (with all SBs and ADs up to date and all logs available) I thought this is going to be 15K-25K in the first year to get right. And it was. .

Another fallacy that the post shows is the “350h engine”. This engine might be great. Or it might be junk. 350h is almost immaterial. Depends on who overhauled it, and how it has been operated since the overhaul.