Buyer representation
Buy a Citation with an operator on your side
Acquisition is roughly three-quarters of our work. We find the airplane, evaluate it the way we would evaluate one for our own fleet, and carry the transaction through to delivery.
What you are engaging
Someone who has bought, flown, and owned these airplanes
A buyer’s agent earns their keep in two places: finding candidates you would not have found, and telling you the truth about the ones you did. We do both from the operator’s side of the business.
Most buyers start on the listing portals, which show a slice of what is actually available and tell you almost nothing about condition. We work that slice too — but a meaningful share of what trades never reaches a public listing, and those candidates only surface if someone is asking.
When we look at a candidate, we are reading it as people who fly, manage, and oversee maintenance on Citations every day. Program status, inspection timing, avionics paths, corrosion history, how the logs are kept — these are the things that decide whether an airplane is a good buy or an expensive lesson, and they rarely appear in the marketing.
The process
From brief to delivery flight
What an acquisition engagement actually involves, start to finish.
The brief
We start with how you actually fly: typical trip length and longest regular leg, passenger counts, the runways you use, whether you’ll fly it yourself, and the budget you want to live inside — acquisition and annual operating. That conversation usually narrows the field to one or two models, and sometimes it tells you the airplane you had in mind is the wrong one.
The search
We work the public market and the part of it that never gets listed. Controller, AvBuyer, and the trade press are the easy half; the other half is calling owners, managers, and the agents we deal with every week to find airplanes that are quietly for sale or could be. You get a running candidate list with our read on each one — not a forwarded listing sheet.
The evaluation
Before you spend money on travel or inspection, we work the records: damage history, engine and program status, inspection timing, avionics currency, ownership chain, and how the airplane has actually been flown and maintained. We fly and manage this type, so we know which maintenance events affect suitability, near-term expense, or your negotiating position. Screening candidates this way keeps your time and travel focused on the airplanes actually worth seeing.
Offer and pre-buy
We price against live comparables and what buyers are actually paying right now, then structure the LOI and manage the pre-buy at a facility that knows the type — including the discrepancy list, what belongs to the seller, and what is fair to accept. This is where most deals are won or lost, and where an operator’s eye is worth the most.
Close and deliver
Escrow, title and lien search, registration, insurance binding, import or export if it applies, and delivery. We have ferried airplanes home ourselves, including across the Atlantic. The deal is not done when the wire clears; it is done when the airplane is on your ramp and you know how to operate it.
Getting started
Start with your mission
Tell us how you fly and what you are trying to accomplish. We will tell you honestly which Citation fits, roughly what it costs to buy and to run, and whether now is a sensible time to be buying.
If it makes sense to work together, we will explain the engagement and the fee structure plainly before you commit to anything. If the answer is that you should wait, or charter, or buy a different airplane than the one you called about, we will say so — we would rather lose a transaction than put someone in the wrong aircraft.
Useful reading while you are deciding: the Citation Buyer’s Guide covers model selection, what a real pre-buy looks like, and engine programs; our operating costs page shows a real managed-fleet budget line by line; and our inventory page lists what we currently represent. If you own a Citation already, we represent sellers too.
Start here
Tell us how you fly
No obligation. Tell us your mission and timeline and we’ll come back with an honest read on which Citation fits, what it costs to buy and to run, and what a search would involve.
Discuss an acquisition
Tell us about your mission
How you fly, how many seats you need, and your timeline. We’ll tell you which Citation fits and what a search would involve.