The New Owner Voices Of Flying

Lack of Planning Spoils an Epic Journey

How to get an airplane home? There was a plan, but reality intervened.

Wednesday, January 05, 2022 at 09:41 AM ET

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With some advance planning, bringing your new airplane home can become an instructional adventure. [Photo: Jason McDowell]

Key Takeaways:

New airplane owners face significant logistical and training challenges immediately after purchase, especially when balancing work and lacking flight currency.
An initial plan to combine ferrying the new plane cross-country with instruction and adventure was abandoned due to the high risk of "get-home-itis" caused by a compressed timeline and long distance.
The author concludes that with sufficient flexible time and thorough advance planning with a CFI, the ferry flight can be an invaluable, multi-purpose training and adventurous introduction to a new aircraft.

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Immediately after purchasing your airplane, you’ll be presented with several new logistical challenges:

Purchase insurance.
Get the airplane home from the seller.
Obtain some flight instruction.
Familiarize yourself with the airplane.
Log some flight time for insurance requirements.

That sort of thing.

Jason McDowell is a private pilot and Cessna 170 owner based in Madison, Wisconsin. He enjoys researching obscure aviation history and serves as a judge for the National Intercollegiate Flying Association. He can be found on Instagram as @cessnateur.