A pre-purchase inspection is a mechanic looking hard at an airplane on your behalf, before your money is committed. It is the single most valuable thing a buyer spends money on, and the one buyers most often skip because the airplane "looks great" and the seller seems nice.
The rough numbers
Prices vary by shop, region, aircraft, and how far you want them to go. The ranges shops, brokers, and owner associations publish look roughly like this:
- Simple certified single (a Cessna 172, a Cherokee): commonly quoted around $500 to $1,500 for a basic-to-thorough look.
- A deeper inspection on a single, with more panels off and more time: often $2,000 to $4,000.
- Comprehensive, or a more complex aircraft (retractable, twin, turbine): $4,000 and up, sometimes well up.
Then the costs that do not appear in the quote:
- Getting the airplane to the shop — ferry or travel costs, commonly several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars.
- Borescope inspection of the cylinders — often quoted separately, in the hundreds. Get it. Engines are the expensive surprise.
- Airworthiness Directive research — confirming every applicable AD has been complied with and the compliance is documented. Also often separate, also worth it.
- Fixing what they find. Not part of the inspection, and the real reason to do one.
What a pre-buy is not
It is not an annual inspection, though some buyers arrange for the pre-buy to roll into one. It is not a title search — that is a separate check on ownership and liens, done by a title company, and a clean title says nothing about the condition of the airplane. And it is not a records check: the inspector is looking at metal, not at the federal record of what this airframe has been through.
Use your own mechanic
The inspection is worth what the inspector's independence is worth. A pre-buy performed by the shop that has maintained the airplane for the current owner, or one the seller recommends, is not the same product. Pay for someone who works for you, ideally someone who knows the type.
Screen first, then inspect
The economics only work if you are selective. You cannot pay $1,500 to inspect every airplane on your shortlist, and you do not need to. The public record — registration status, ownership history, filed documents, and accident history matched by serial number as well as tail number — costs almost nothing and rules out the obvious problems in minutes.
Screen every candidate on paper. Send your mechanic to the one or two that survive. Paying for a pre-buy on an airframe you could have ruled out from a free registry search is the most avoidable money in the whole process.
And when the inspection does turn something up: that is the inspection working. A pre-buy that finds $8,000 of deferred maintenance just paid for itself several times over, whether you renegotiate or walk.