Crazy statements in Ads

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
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Montgomery County PA
Display Name
Display name:
Adam Zucker
I get a chuckle out of the phrases in some Aircraft For Sale Ads. What are some of your favorites. I always scratch my head when I see:

"For Immediate Sale" Duh are you listing something to sell it in a year?

"Airline Pilot Owned" Ok so he is really good at flying an approach to mins but who cares? Have you heard the expression ' A cobbler's kid have no shoes'?

"$17,000 Spent on last Annual" Ok so either you really neglected your plane until then or something really important broke and now they are fixed.

" Your search is over" Really? Thanks for letting me know.
 
Barnstormers makes you put one of those tags...I never know what to put
 
Or the ad written by someone who appears to be a moron who know nothing about airplanes.

" doped Seconite fabric"

"no tail-dragger license required." (aircraft is a nosewheel conversion of a tailwheel design)

"Most XXXXs out there have twisted one gear leg socket out of the engine mount, during an excursion off onto the grass after a botched landing as a tail-dragger. Well, you won't ever have to worry about that with this one!" Um.... right...

"Breaking news: a nice XXXX sold for $36K in October 2013 in Mojave." Trying to pump up your price?


And, best of all:
"$200 cash will be charged for a ride, refundable when you purchase the aicraft. Also no aerobatic manoeuvers will be done during this check ride."
Yea, right. I'm going to PAY you to let you try and sell me your airplane.
 
Fearless Tower said:
If you've had to deal with some tire-kickers out there, you'd understand why some folks make such a statement.

How effective it is a different debate.
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Right, but stating that does not prevent tire-kicking. Hanging up the phone does. But the phrase in the ad doesn't stop anything.
 
bartmc said:
You get to/have to pick one of the phrases like that on barnstormers.
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I don't know how anyone can handle barnstormers.
If I took a crap and it built a website I think it would be more organized.

That site seems to have better deals but it is not worth the migrane
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I don't know how anyone can handle barnstormers.
If I took a crap and it built a website I think it would be more organized.

That site seems to have better deals but it is not worth the migrane
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It's like digging through a litter pile full of scraps of information.
 
Owned and maintained by an A&P comes with fresh annual.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I don't know how anyone can handle barnstormers.
If I took a crap and it built a website I think it would be more organized.

That site seems to have better deals but it is not worth the migrane
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I completely agree. I'm sure Barnstormers was state of the art HTML design in 1990.

When looking to buy my airplane I ruled out any ads that didn't list a price. If I had to pick up the phone just to hear your selling price (and the rest of the sales pitch with it) I wasn't bothering. I wanted numbers and stats, not a sales pitch
 
I cannot fathom why someone would try to sell a $20,000 to $2,000,000 aircraft without a single photograph. Either the seller is a moron, or it is that bad.

frfly172 said:
Owned and maintained by an A&P comes with fresh annual.
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These scare me the most. We're going through a pre-buy on an "owner A&P/IA maintained" aircraft right now. The things we find are :mad2:

An owner A&P will be one extreme or the other. Either immaculate, or a complete disaster.
 
AdamZ said:
"$17,000 Spent on last Annual" Ok so either you really neglected your plane until then or something really important broke and now they are fixed.
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Make it $50k spent on last annual and you have a common 421 selling point.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Or the ad written by someone who appears to be a moron who know nothing about airplanes.

" doped Seconite fabric"

"no tail-dragger license required." (aircraft is a nosewheel conversion of a tailwheel design)

"Most XXXXs out there have twisted one gear leg socket out of the engine mount, during an excursion off onto the grass after a botched landing as a tail-dragger. Well, you won't ever have to worry about that with this one!" Um.... right...

"Breaking news: a nice XXXX sold for $36K in October 2013 in Mojave." Trying to pump up your price?


And, best of all:
"$200 cash will be charged for a ride, refundable when you purchase the aicraft. Also no aerobatic manoeuvers will be done during this check ride."
Yea, right. I'm going to PAY you to let you try and sell me your airplane.
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Unless he is a comm pilot, that's illegal anyway.:nono:
 
Unit74 said:
Unless he is a comm pilot, that's illegal anyway.:nono:
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61.113(f) allows a private pilot (who has at least 200 logged hours), while acting as a salesman, to be compensated for demonstrating an aircraft in flight to a prospective buyer.
 
Speaking of "crazy ads", on a recent trip back to the US I was amazed at the bombardment of TV ads by the PI attorneys. The majority were downright bizarre if not comical. After being out do the US and not being exposed to those bottom dwellers it's a bit shocking to see just how bizarre it's become.

Aviation ads have always been bad (most of the time). My favorite was from a used airplane shill who would always put in his ad " (his name) loves to buy (airplane type), pays way too much for nice ones!"
 
Just saw one where the paint was crap and they actually advertised it as " Needs Paint,you get to pick your own color"
 
AdamZ said:
Just saw one where the paint was crap and they actually advertised it as " Needs Paint,you get to pick your own color"
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I saw one something to the effect of: small crack in engine, you get to choose new engine or some other solution. If I come across it again I will update.
 
AdamZ said:
Just saw one where the paint was crap and they actually advertised it as " Needs Paint,you get to pick your own color"
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I actually kinda like those. At least they are being honest about the condition.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
And, best of all:
"$200 cash will be charged for a ride, refundable when you purchase the aicraft. Also no aerobatic manoeuvers will be done during this check ride."
Yea, right. I'm going to PAY you to let you try and sell me your airplane.
Click to expand...

I'm actually sympathetic to this one due to what I assume is the reason behind it. You know there are pilots out there who would pretend to be interested in buying a plane just to get a test flight in something cool. Possibly he's run into some of them and he doesn't want to keep paying the bill for random strangers to fly his plane around with no intention of buying it.

I suspect there are better ways to go about that, but I can understand where he's coming from.
 
RotorAndWing said:
Speaking of "crazy ads", on a recent trip back to the US I was amazed at the bombardment of TV ads by the PI attorneys. The majority were downright bizarre if not comical. After being out do the US and not being exposed to those bottom dwellers it's a bit shocking to see just how bizarre it's become.
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Note well - you see these during the day, working hours, best time to market to people who lack the drive or determination to hold a job. There are a lot of these people, and sadly enough, they breed a lot.

RotorAndWing said:
Aviation ads have always been bad (most of the time). My favorite was from a used airplane shill who would always put in his ad " (his name) loves to buy (airplane type), pays way too much for nice ones!"
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Ah yes, B arron T homas Aviation. He also routinely advertised for people to invest in aircraft loans, most of which (as it turned out) were secured by unflysble hulks, or mere data plates.
 
Jim Logajan said:
61.113(f) allows a private pilot (who has at least 200 logged hours), while acting as a salesman, to be compensated for demonstrating an aircraft in flight to a prospective buyer.
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You misquoted the CFR, sir.

The section reads:

(f) A private pilot who is an aircraft salesman and who has at least 200 hours of logged flight time may demonstrate an aircraft in flight to a prospective buyer.

This is what is confusing to me and my search failed to yield the CFR or FAA OGC definition of what "an aircraft salesman" is. You inserted "acting" which would be tantamount to temporary and fit a PPC holder to only briefly being compensated for the flight. I would opine that subsection (f) had a legislative intent that a person engaged in the business of aircraft sales could be compensated and the section was not written for the weekend bugsmasher.

If that was the case, I think it would be rather easy to simply post your aircraft for sale, take people,up for rides disagree on a price and laugh all the way tot the bank as you have become a defacto 135 operator. You could do this forever, really as long as your aircraft is being advertised for sale.
 
\__[Ô]__/;1606924 said:
I'm actually sympathetic to this one due to what I assume is the reason behind it. You know there are pilots out there who would pretend to be interested in buying a plane just to get a test flight in something cool. Possibly he's run into some of them and he doesn't want to keep paying the bill for random strangers to fly his plane around with no intention of buying it.

I suspect there are better ways to go about that, but I can understand where he's coming from.
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I understand the reason.

But...

The guy appears to be pretty weak on materials ("doped Seconite" Really?) and likely has been doing the maintenance on this E-AB aircraft. There is no asking price - just the stuff about how a similar aircraft with many more hours sold for $... And, he guy comes off as a real PITA to deal with. Am I going to travel 2/3 of the way across the country to look at it? No. I'm not even going to bother to pick up the phone.

Good luck actually selling the airplane.
 
petrolero said:
Right, but stating that does not prevent tire-kicking. Hanging up the phone does. But the phrase in the ad doesn't stop anything.
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Maybe, but the only way to know that for certain is to have tried unsuccessfully to use the statement in a ad yourself or be a tire-kicker and call anyway on such an ad. Which one are you?

All I am saying is that while I wouldn't use the line myself, I would hardly begrudge someone who does.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
I understand the reason.

But...

The guy appears to be pretty weak on materials ("doped Seconite" Really?) and likely has been doing the maintenance on this E-AB aircraft. There is no asking price - just the stuff about how a similar aircraft with many more hours sold for $... And, he guy comes off as a real PITA to deal with. Am I going to travel 2/3 of the way across the country to look at it? No. I'm not even going to bother to pick up the phone.

Good luck actually selling the airplane.
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I've noticed a lot of ads lately where someone is 'listing for a friend'. In other words, the person who placed the ad is not the actual owner and may simply be relaying details they don't understand from a non- computer literate owner.
 
Fearless Tower said:
I've noticed a lot of ads lately where someone is 'listing for a friend'. In other words, the person who placed the ad is not the actual owner and may simply be relaying details they don't understand from a non- computer literate owner.
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Those could be bargains or scams, hard to know until you call. :dunno:
 
Fearless Tower said:
Agree. Probably why I don't get too worked up over wording of airplane ads.
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I have a friend that used to troll through Ebay searching for mispelled descriptions, easy enough to spell a word wrong and most people spell it right when they search. So, he would find auctions with few if any bidders and buy stuff cheap! :D I don't care too much about the wording either, bad pictures drive me nuts! :mad2:
 
N747JB said:
I have a friend that used to troll through Ebay searching for mispelled descriptions, easy enough to spell a word wrong and most people spell it right when they search. So, he would find auctions with few if any bidders and buy stuff cheap! :D I don't care too much about the wording either, bad pictures drive me nuts! :mad2:
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I wish I had saved one of the auctions I saw auctioning a 1939 Ford convertable. It had a picture of a 1989 Mustang convertable..:rofl:

Darn... I really wanted that 39.:yes:
 
I like the IFR rated planes that don't seem to have IFR gear, or have equipment right out of some 1960's time warp.

Or the silly prices some people think their planes are worth with their ancient equipment, just because they got it somehow squeaked through some recent annual.

Or lacking pictures. Or tiny pictures that are blurry. Yeah, seems legit to me.

shut_up_and_take_my_money.gif
 
Unit74 said:
You misquoted the CFR, sir.

The section reads:

(f) A private pilot who is an aircraft salesman and who has at least 200 hours of logged flight time may demonstrate an aircraft in flight to a prospective buyer.

This is what is confusing to me and my search failed to yield the CFR or FAA OGC definition of what "an aircraft salesman" is. You inserted "acting" which would be tantamount to temporary and fit a PPC holder to only briefly being compensated for the flight. I would opine that subsection (f) had a legislative intent that a person engaged in the business of aircraft sales could be compensated and the section was not written for the weekend bugsmasher.

If that was the case, I think it would be rather easy to simply post your aircraft for sale, take people,up for rides disagree on a price and laugh all the way tot the bank as you have become a defacto 135 operator. You could do this forever, really as long as your aircraft is being advertised for sale.
Click to expand...

So you are saying that this "airplane salesman" is charging people to give demonstration flights?

And if the "ride" (demo flight) departs and returns to the same airport, and the seller is not holding out to the public for air transportation, then how is he a "defacto 135 operator"?? :dunno:
 
UngaWunga said:
I like the IFR rated planes that don't seem to have IFR gear, or have equipment right out of some 1960's time warp.
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Meeting the minimum IFR equipment requirements doesn't necessarily mean it is practical. A single ADF and single com is perfectly acceptable as long as you can navigate your intended route of flight with it. You could certify it for IFR operation, and sell it as such. It would be incredibly stupid and impractical, but not a lie.
 
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