What size expenses await the person that buys this? (Curious, not trolling)

Rgbeard

Rgbeard

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rgbeard
So this came in my email today, maybe in yours, too. And I clicked the link:

1979 CESSNA CITATION ISP

Do you dream of showing up on the ramp "in style" and having the red carpet rolled out to your jet, but you don't think you can do it on your budget? For a purchase price less than the cost of a later model Cessna 182 and cruising at 345 knots to boot, this single-pilot certified Citation I SP...
www.aviatorsmarket.com www.aviatorsmarket.com

A Citation priced at “less than the cost of a later model 182”.

Let’s set aside the insurance discussion from this one - I know it would be eye-watering.

I don’t know the times and overhaul points on light jets, but figure that’s what’s waiting. You’ve got maybe 50 hrs on this thing and then - what? Is there about $1mm in engine work, or a $400k stage-something inspection?

When it’s too good to be true, it always is.
 
Rgbeard said:
So this came in my email today, maybe in yours, too. And I clicked the link:

1979 CESSNA CITATION ISP

Do you dream of showing up on the ramp "in style" and having the red carpet rolled out to your jet, but you don't think you can do it on your budget? For a purchase price less than the cost of a later model Cessna 182 and cruising at 345 knots to boot, this single-pilot certified Citation I SP...
www.aviatorsmarket.com www.aviatorsmarket.com

A Citation priced at “less than the cost of a later model 182”.

Let’s set aside the insurance discussion from this one - I know it would be eye-watering.

I don’t know the times and overhaul points on light jets, but figure that’s what’s waiting. You’ve got maybe 50 hrs on this thing and then - what? Is there about $1mm in engine work, or a $400k stage-something inspection?

When it’s too good to be true, it always is.
Click to expand...
I can't wait to see the responses here, but:

If you have to ask the price....
 
Paging @kaiser

He was trying to talk us all in to something like this at 6y9.

I think once they get under 1MM, they're disposable.
 
Rgbeard said:
So this came in my email today, maybe in yours, too. And I clicked the link:

1979 CESSNA CITATION ISP

Do you dream of showing up on the ramp "in style" and having the red carpet rolled out to your jet, but you don't think you can do it on your budget? For a purchase price less than the cost of a later model Cessna 182 and cruising at 345 knots to boot, this single-pilot certified Citation I SP...
www.aviatorsmarket.com www.aviatorsmarket.com

A Citation priced at “less than the cost of a later model 182”.

Let’s set aside the insurance discussion from this one - I know it would be eye-watering.

I don’t know the times and overhaul points on light jets, but figure that’s what’s waiting. You’ve got maybe 50 hrs on this thing and then - what? Is there about $1mm in engine work, or a $400k stage-something inspection?

When it’s too good to be true, it always is.
Click to expand...
No expert here - just did a quick search.

Pratt & Whitney JT15D-1A overhaul - anywhere between $350,00 – $500,000 each
Per listing:
  • Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-1A
  • E1: 7,957 / 1,948 TT left until major overhaul
  • E2: 8,868 / 1,639 TT left until major overhaul
 
if I’m spending that much money I’d want a toilet.
 
If you're asking about the price? I'd say this one would go 600k to 900k. Interior and exterior are looking good, but avionics are very very old. These with full garmin glass (which is like 200k) go for 1.1-1.3M. I'm assuming the HSI was recently done given the "time until next overhaul" number. Def something to check. For these, you only overhaul engines if there's something wrong. Part 91 you just do Hot-sides. Hot side intervals are approx 1/2 of the overhaul interval (3500hrs?) can go from anywhere between 100k -> 400k each - depending on how bad the internals and life-limited parts are.

The big recurring maintenance items on old citations are time-based. I don't know all the inspections, but the expensive ones are related to life limited parts, bottles (ox, emer air, etc) (also they don't make those new anymore), 6? year gear, etc. The trick is going to a shop that can do these reliably that is not a Service Center. The other big big costs are insurance and landing fees (isn't there a thread about that very item?). No one will be crying for jet owners.

My rough and average numbers would suggest 60k for the 1st hour, then just cost of fuel after that - so 500-700/hr in gas, maybe less if you have a jet fuel card and shop around. There are people out there that buy these to fly for 500 hours then they dump them. Maintenance can get very cheap in that case. Although, you suck in a bird, you're out 1+M (or buy a used engine)
 
You'd have to run thru all the books, but just based on calendar and airframe time, there are a butt load of required phase inspections either due or coming due soon. A full Phase five inspection will run you past 70K$ without parts...

Nitrogen bottle for the gear is 10K$ if you can find one that hasn't timed out.
 
Both engines have more time than the airframe. Makes you go huh?
 
We had a tenant with an older jet a few years ago in the same price range. The airframe came up on a major required maintenance interval at the same time both engines did. The airplane was worth about $600k, and was looking at well over that in cost to complete all of the required maintenance. The plane was basically totalled by routine maintenance. They decided to sell the aircraft to an aviation scrapping company to part out.
 
midwestpa24 said:
We had a tenant with an older jet a few years ago in the same price range. The airframe came up on a major required maintenance interval at the same time both engines did. The airplane was worth about $600k, and was looking at well over that in cost to complete all of the required maintenance. The plane was basically totalled by routine maintenance. They decided to sell the aircraft to an aviation scrapping company to part out.
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Was the airplane worth $600k with overhauled engines and airframe issues resolved? If so, then it wasn't worth that amount with run out engines and airframe.
 
Salty said:
Was the airplane worth $600k with overhauled engines and airframe issues resolved? If so, then it wasn't worth that amount with run out engines and airframe.
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$600k running, but needed $600k+ to keep it that way. It wasn't going to be worth $1.2M when it was done, maybe $800k. Worth more to part out than to try to keep flyable.

Wasn't a bad looking plane either, just too many high dollar inspections and parts all coming due at the same time.
 
Most guys would be a bit embarrassed to pull on the ramp and actually consider that a jet
 
midwestpa24 said:
We had a tenant with an older jet a few years ago in the same price range. The airframe came up on a major required maintenance interval at the same time both engines did. The airplane was worth about $600k, and was looking at well over that in cost to complete all of the required maintenance. The plane was basically totalled by routine maintenance. They decided to sell the aircraft to an aviation scrapping company to part out.
Click to expand...

I wonder how often that sort of thing happens to more humble SE prop birds... the cessna's, pipers, beechcraft, mooney's, etc... that we all love so much...
 
It’s indicating 1900 until overhaul for both sides, but they have probably both been overhauled twice or maybe three times. That means the next overhaul will be either super expensive or throwing away and starting with new engines. If it has been flogged, then that will almost certainly be the case. I didn’t look that hard, but I didn’t see anything about the hot section. My guess is that with that many hours left, it will probably be due a hot section inspection/overhaul not too long from now. That won’t be cheap. Additionally, in my quick glance I didn’t see anything about phase 1 thru 4 inspections. You need to know where it stands with all that.

If you plan on hiring a pilot, it will probably be more difficult to find someone comfortable with steam guages. Relatively speaking, it wouldn’t be massively expensive to just rebuild the panel with glass.

It will cost about $20K to get type trained and after that you will have to have 500 hours to fly single pilot. Single pilot has massively more to do with the pilot than the plane. I think the ISP, was a marketing thing back then. It doesn’t take much to make the plane SP.

All this said, in any case, this is stepping into a world of very expensive flying regardless of the purchase price. If after all these issues you have to be prepared for, and you still want to spend money on a Citation, if this is a solid plane, it would be a great candidate for putting Williams engines and a Garmin panel at overhaul time and make a worthwhile Citation even though it wouldn’t be an Encore or other more updated model, but you could save your money and build it as you go.

When buying a Citation, you’re sort of buying a plane and you’re buying a pair of engines. The plane has one value and the engines another. There are plans available where you pay for engine time as you go. Some people like that, but if you have someone to manage it properly and a good engine shop, mechanic and so forth, you can have less expensive engine and maintenance costs. You sort of look at engines by the hour like fuel. At o/h costing about a $1M per side, not including hot section and good for about 3500 hours, that’s about $600 per hour engine cost and something like 190 GPH costing about $950 per hour (rough guess) yeah, the initial cost is not a lot of the overall equation.

Another problem is downtime waiting on parts. You need to manage maintenance by locating the parts that may be needed at the next inspection phase to prevent massive downtime of an expen$ive asset while awaiting parts.

There’s may be nothing more expensive than a cheap Citation.
 
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Brad W said:
I wonder how often that sort of thing happens to more humble SE prop birds... the cessna's, pipers, beechcraft, mooney's, etc... that we all love so much...
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I don’t think it happens with prop planes so much since their value generally doubled during the Covid. With some really small planes like old Cherokees and 150’s the value might not be there, but I don’t envision many getting scrapped.

We have several Citatations on the field, but none older than an Encore, so I have never known of one scrapped like you describe. Yes, engine overhaul alone at about a million per side could result in such a measure, but most people realize that they have the plane cost and then they have the expense of the engines on the plane. It’s two different expenses.
 
MBDiagMan said:
????? It’s not a jet???? I don’t see any propellers. There’s nothing wrong with an older, well kept Citation.
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Of course not… it’s just the speed that gets a chuckle in the jet world.
 
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