Buying and selling planes as a private pilot
Asked by: Gordon Bower 5928 views FAA Regulations
Suppose you are a private pilot, and own an airplane and wish to sell it. A prospective buyer wants to take it out and try it -- or perhaps even get the x hours in type his insurance company requires -- before he signs on the dotted line and flies it home.
If the buyer takes the plane out as the PIC, alone or with an instructor or with the owner as just a passenger, and pays the seller an hourly fee for the use of the plane, it looks like the seller has just run foul of the rules against offering his plane for charter or rent. If the buyer and seller go out together with the seller as PIC, and the buyer pays more than half the cost of the flight, it looks like the seller is flying for compensation.
Do people simply ignore this when they buy and sell their planes to each other? Is there an exemption for this that I am not seeing (e.g., paying someone for the right to inspect/flight test their plane for possible purchase is not the same as just paying someone to fly his plane)?
Does it matter if you only do it once -- selling a plane you've owned for personal use for some time -- as opposed to "flipping planes" the way some people buy, fix up, and then sell houses?
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