The Illustrated Buyer's Guide to Used Airplanes

The General Aviation industry, obsessed with promoting its wares as rational business decisions, foundered at the very time the speedboat, exotic car, and expensive motorcycle (read: Harley-Davidson) businesses blossomed. The reason is that these business openly vended their wares for what they were: expensive toys. No one tried, as Cessna and Piper have for forty years, to get even the most gullible affluent buyer of Cigarette boats and Ferraris that they were buying anything but fun and snob appeal.

Personally, I find the wares of Wichita pretty deficient in the fun factor as compared to homebuilts and warbirds, and I'm not one of the few people with a legitimate business case-and there still are a (very) few-for owning a 310 or a Bonanza. But if you want to buy a certificated light aircraft, this book does offer a good insight into their respective strong and weak points and explains how the procedure of buying one is best managed. My main disagreement is with how the word "investment" is used with regard to aircraft not in revenue service. (If it isn't, it isn't an investment-and leaseback doesn't count.) If you want an investment, buy stocks, bonds or real estate-but, unless you're Southwest Airlines, never, ever an airplane.


Lacked detailed info   March 26, 2002
 16 out of 18 found this review helpful

I ordered this book hoping to get detailed info on a number of airplanes. It listed specifications, exterior dimensions, weights and fuel capacities for many aircraft but lacked any real details on individual aircraft models. The Aviation Consumer Guides are better and have more detailed analysis of accidents and aircraft systems. I returned it.


Best in Class   October 27, 2000
 6 out of 9 found this review helpful

This book would benefit from more photos and specifics on various models but is the best book of its kind. The information found in "the illustrated buyers guide" is a bargain even if you are not serious about buying.


Just the plane facts!   October 9, 2000
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

I am new to general aviation and was looking for information about the different types of general aviation planes: what they look like, how they perform, and a ballpark estimate on how much they cost. (I'm not seriously planning to buy one (not yet anyway), but price is a useful piece of information). This book delivers all that.

The book could be improved by providing a few more photographs and by including a few more pieces of data for each plane (e.g., cruising range, ceiling, fuel consumption, Vmc, etc.). Another improvement would be to increase the information in the narratives for each type of plane, better describing flying quirks and typical problems for the purchasers (e.g., expensive ADs, commonly found damage, etc.); detailed narratives like those contained in the dated "Buying and owning your own airplane" by J. E. Ellis would be a benefit. With these few improvements, the book would be perfect.