SOLJETS Outlines Key Steps to Keep a Private Jet Acquisition on Schedule

SOLJETS has published guidance describing how a private jet acquisition can stay on schedule when the buyer, seller, aircraft, and transaction team are properly prepared. The firm states that the transaction timeline generally begins once an aircraft is selected and commercial terms are agreed, not when the search starts, and notes that inspection findings, financing conditions, or international requirements can extend the timeline beyond a standard domestic transaction.

Before negotiations open, SOLJETS advises buyers to define mission requirements — including required range, typical passenger count, runway needs, and acquisition budget — and to arrange financing, legal counsel, a tax advisor, and an escrow provider in advance, with lenders receiving financial statements and ownership information early. In the first one to three days after aircraft selection, brokers should confirm the seller's availability, the aircraft's location, access to maintenance records, and willingness to support the transaction timeline, while requesting digital logbooks, maintenance tracking reports, damage history, upcoming inspection requirements, and engine program details.

Days two through five call for a written purchase agreement prepared by aviation counsel specifying deadlines for inspection, acceptance, discrepancy resolution, and closing, along with terms covering deposit refundability, delivery condition, and repair responsibility; AOPA's sample aircraft purchase/sales agreement is cited as a reference, though AOPA's own documentation stresses the sample is a general guide only and that parties should retain a qualified attorney rather than copying the form. Securing an inspection slot should begin during days three through fifteen, with buyers engaging facilities experienced with the specific aircraft model while the purchase agreement is finalized, and inspection scope agreed with a technical advisor covering airworthiness directives, maintenance status, and model-specific concerns.

From days five through twenty, title review, lien identification, FAA registration name-matching, International Registry searches where applicable, and insurance arrangements should proceed alongside the physical inspection; the FAA requires that the purchaser's name on the bill of sale match the applicant's name on the registration application. At the final stage, buyers should confirm inspection acceptance, completed contractual repairs, signed documents, and available funds — independently verifying wire instructions via a known phone number — before coordinating delivery location, insurance activation, records handover, and maintenance program transfers.

The guidance reflects how private aircraft transactions actually unfold: several workstreams — legal drafting, inspection scheduling, title and lien review, registration name-matching, and insurance — run in parallel rather than in sequence, and the slowest of them sets the real closing date. Framing the clock as starting at aircraft selection, not at the start of the search, underscores that preparation done beforehand (financing, counsel, escrow, mission requirements) determines how fast the parallel tracks can actually move once a deal is struck.

The repeated emphasis on name-matching between the bill of sale and the FAA registration application, and on independently verifying wire instructions before funds move, points to where these deals typically stall or go wrong — paperwork mismatches and closing-stage fraud risk rather than the aircraft itself. Citing AOPA's sample agreement alongside AOPA's own caution against using it without a qualified attorney also signals how much of this process depends on counsel tailoring generic templates to the specific aircraft and parties.

What determines whether a given deal holds to this kind of timeline is whether financing approval, inspection slot availability, and title/lien clearance land within the same window — a gap in any one of them extends the whole transaction, particularly where international registry searches or cross-border elements are involved.