What is considered a low hour airplane vs a high hour airplane? If you are buying a high hour airplane are there any to stay away from?

It depends on a LOT of factors. A very high time Super Cub could essentially be an almost new airplane after rebuild with new fuselage, new fabric, new wiring/avionics, etc. And, yes, those are out there.

A metal airplane which has been kept in hangars it’s entire life and operated in dry country and with good maintenance might be just fine, and a low time plane that was wrecked and rebuilt by a hack, or a low time plane that lived outside on floats in Louisiana, operating in brackish and salt water might be a corrosion nightmare.

Years ago, I owned a Cessna 180. For several years. The plane had prior damage history, and it had ~ 6,000 hours when I offered it for sale. The prospective buyers hired a mechanic to do a pre purchase inspection.

Oddly enough the buyers weren’t concerned about the damage history, but they were concerned about the total time on the airframe. They brought that up with their mechanic, who started laughing. He opened the logbooks, and started reading from the section that described the previous repairs:

“Let’s see, removed and replaced left wing assembly with new Cessna left wing assembly, removed and replaced right wing assembly with new Cessna right wing assembly, disassembled fuselage and installed new Cessna gearbox, etc. The point being, this airframe is newer than that 2,000 hour 180 over there, and maybe straighter.”

So, it depends.

MTV

One of my former gliding instructors had a super cub that was in parts in his hanger not sure the hours. I hear they are starting to be worth something I might reach out to him. It's located in Arkansas where I am located. I asked the question because my mother wants to start a business and we need to buy a company bush plane. I haven't really looked into it before now so this is all new to me.

Don't buy a high time Cessna from Brenco Aerial Patrol. Other high time pipeline and powerline patrol airplanes could be a good buy, however. We went 3,000 hours regularly because the airplanes were flown around 25 hours weekly, even Brenco planes. With good operations, parts are replaced regularly and maintenance is good. Operations that put a lot of hours on airplanes also can have good paperwork with poor maintenance. With a good mechanic, it would be worth a look for a good high time airplane at a reasonable price. 20,000 hours is common. Age of the airplane, not hours, is an issue with some insurance for that kind of work. Not that it should be.

arkansasaviation wrote:One of my former gliding instructors had a super cub that was in parts in his hanger not sure the hours. I hear they are starting to be worth something I might reach out to him. It's located in Arkansas where I am located. I asked the question because my mother wants to start a business and we need to buy a company bush plane. I haven't really looked into it before now so this is all new to me.

First task: Figure out what the MISSION is. That will drive what TYPE will best suit the task.

Then start looking, and educate yourself on that aircraft type. Once you find a candidate, hire a mechanic who is very familiar with the type to perform a pre purchase inspection.

Let that Mechanic tell you the condition of the plane.

In other words, you’re getting waaaaay ahead of yourself.

MTV

The real question in my mind is how much money and attention has gone into the aircraft during its life. A low hour airframe where maintenance and hangarage was short changed to save cost worries me much more than a commercially maintained 10,000hr machine. This said, there’s a threshold where accepting risk and issues makes sense, cost wise. Everything is a spectrum.

I fly lots of machines at work in the tens of thousands of hours on them. Maintenance is everything, my own personal plane is in the 9000s on the airframe, and fresh forward of the firewall. I wouldn’t bat an eye at a commercially maintained 10,000hrs but would look hard at a 2,000hr airframe that’s lived on the coast or has a checkered past of cost conscious maintenance and repair.

Ardent wrote:The real question in my mind is how much money and attention has gone into the aircraft during its life. A low hour airframe where maintenance and hangarage was short changed to save cost worries me much more than a commercially maintained 10,000hr machine. This said, there’s a threshold where accepting risk and issues makes sense, cost wise. Everything is a spectrum.

I fly lots of machines at work in the tens of thousands of hours on them. Maintenance is everything, my own personal plane is in the 9000s on the airframe, and fresh forward of the firewall. I wouldn’t bat an eye at a commercially maintained 10,000hrs but would look hard at a 2,000hr airframe that’s lived on the coast or has a checkered past of cost conscious maintenance and repair.

This is a very interesting post. I on the other hand am always very wary of commercially operated aircraft. I have been finding more and more that it's all about paperwork and not actual maintenance. I have seen some absolutely brutal stuff come out of AMOs. The fling wing side is much better, bit man the fixed wing side stuff has some very sketchy stuff coming out of some shops even though the paperwork is perfect. I've been bugging TC about this issue a bit. But they are so under manned that they really only care about the paperwork being proper and don't have time to actually go out and look at the work that's being done.

My experience has been the rather the opposite admittedly, fixed wing included. Worked for operations over the years with fixed wing sides as well, and of course worked with fixed wing float operators for years for the outfitting. Commercially, engines were operated enough to get the oil changed regularly, every few months or better, and more typically every month and dry it out regularly in between. My own fixed wings haven’t got that treatment reliably enough.

Engines typically made TBO way ahead of 12 years, average is 1.5-3 years, negating ancient engines, controls, accessories, belts, wires and hoses etc. Flight controls and structures are readily examined, rather than pencil whipped in a once annual oil change as so many poor private planes get (including ones I’ve bought and found the evidence of). I know you do far, far better than that and hold a standard, as do many, many AMEs who work on private planes.

To me the gist is sitting kills aircraft, and commercial ones don’t sit, as if they do they go out of business. My own sits too much, so I speak from wincing experience in that regard.

I agree with Ardent's reasoning about commercial airplanes. They are flown regularly. I flew for a small company that had few airplanes and the best manager/mechanic I had the privilege to fly for, Greg Simler. Those few airplanes were high time and excellent. When Underwood ended business, some people got some really good airplanes at reasonable prices. Someone on here got the yellow 172 with about 20,000 hours. I flew for another patrol company that completely fudged immaculate paperwork and had excellent lawyers. Loss of a plane and pilot was no economic factor to this company as insurance replaced the plane and the owner was proud of never having lost a workmen's compensation case. That company kept pilots only because it undercut competitors to almost completely avoid deadheads and thus had the money to pay well. Having a lot of experience flying marginal airplanes spraying, I stayed with them flying their poorly maintained airplanes. I survived many forced landings and precautionary landings. Others did not. There were fatalities.

So it can go either way with commercial. Big companies, however, have reputations that can be checked out. Anyway, the hours are not the issue.

100 hours a year is a number I've frequently heard as a good rule of thumb for a GA airplane. As in, a 30 year old airplane with 3000 hours has probably been flown and maintained. A 30 year old airplane with 1000 hours has been sitting around a lot.

But all the above comments referencing type of flying, how it has been maintained, and how it has been stored are even more important.

Airplanes are more like houses than cars. If they have good bones and you maintain them well they can last a long time. There are some airframes in Part 121 service today with more than 50,000 hours.