What it costs
How much does pre-sale aircraft detailing cost?
Two things decide what a pre-sale detail costs, and neither of them is the aircraft's size on its own. The first is how far the finish and the cabin have drifted from presentable. The second is how much time sits between now and the photographs, the walkthrough or the pre-buy. A hangared aircraft with a month in hand is a different job from a ramp-parked one with a listing date next Tuesday. Below is what moves that number on your aircraft, and how to read any quote already in front of you.
Why there is no number on this page
We quote against a written scope, and on a pre-sale job that scope is written after somebody has looked at the aircraft. A published figure does one of two things. It is wrong for most aircraft, because a King Air that has sat outside through a Georgia summer and a hangared large-cabin jet share nothing beyond the word detailing. Or it becomes a ceiling, and the work is trimmed to fit it — on a pre-sale job that means the belly, the wheel wells and the second correction pass, the exact places a buyer's inspector goes looking. What you should hold a vendor to is the scope, not the number attached to it. A vendor who quotes without seeing the aircraft is guessing, and you meet the difference later.
What actually moves the number
How much aircraft there is, and how high it goes
Surface area is the obvious part. Access is the expensive part. A tail you can reach from a step is a different day from one that needs a stand or a lift moved and repositioned around the aircraft, and every reposition is time nobody is polishing. Wing height, nacelle height and whether the aircraft can be towed inside at all change the crew size before anyone touches a pad.
How far the finish has drifted
There is a wide gap between clean and photographs well. Oxidation, wash marring and swirls scatter light, and listing photography is shot close and lit hard, which is precisely the condition that finds them. Paint that only needs decontaminating and sealing is a short job. Paint that needs a multi-stage correction to read as deep rather than chalky is measured in crew-days, and how many stages it takes depends on the paint system and its repaint history.
The belly, the gear and the wheel wells
Nobody photographs the belly, which is why it gets skipped, and it is the first place a pre-buy inspector goes with a torch. Hydraulic tracking, exhaust staining along the aft fuselage and grime packed into gear legs, doors and actuating mechanisms take aviation-appropriate degreasers and patience. On an aircraft that has not had it done in years, that area alone can be a full day.
The deadline you are working to
Time is the driver most people leave out of the brief. The same scope delivered across four unhurried days and delivered before Friday's photographer are different jobs: the second needs a larger crew, overlapping shifts and often overnight hangar access. Tell us the date at the start. If a window is too short to do something properly, we say so before you commit rather than after.
What the previous vendor left behind
Recovery work is the most underestimated line in a pre-sale quote. Rotary swirls set into the topcoat, compound residue dried into seams and rivet lines, silicone dressing on plastics that flashes white under a photographer's lights, leather conditioned until it reads tacky. All of it has to come back to a baseline before the good work starts, and that baseline pass is invisible in the finished result.
How many different materials are in the cabin
A cabin is not one surface. Aniline and pigmented leather, wool or nylon carpet, veneer under varying lacquers, stone, plated metal, acrylic transparencies and specialty textiles each want different chemistry and a different amount of moisture. Alcantara is usually the item that decides the interior hours: it mats when it is over-wetted, and it cannot be brought back with more product.
Where the aircraft will be standing
A hangar with power and even light removes wind, sun and most of the reasons an exterior streaks or spots. An open ramp in July does not. Some fields only permit washing in a designated area with run-off containment, which pushes the job to dry or rinse-less methods — slower over a large airframe. Then add FBO access, escort and badge requirements, a tow, and whether the aircraft has to be moved during the day for other traffic.
Brightwork, and whether it is being recovered or maintained
Polished leading edges, nacelles, spinners and exhaust stacks are the first thing anyone notices walking up to the aircraft, and a bright leading edge against a dull nacelle draws the eye straight to the inconsistency. Bringing neglected metal back to one even finish is a multi-stage cut and refine across every polished surface. Maintaining metal already at a baseline is a far shorter job.
What the work actually consists of
Sequence first: exterior before cabin, so the last thing finished is the first thing a buyer touches. Decontamination and wash, correction where the paint warrants it, brightwork, then belly, gear legs and wheel wells, then the interior, then a final cabin pass after the aircraft is towed and positioned. A light jet on a full pre-sale scope runs to two crew across two days with a single correction stage, and longer as stages are added. A large-cabin aircraft is three or four crew across three days, or a larger team working overnight when the listing date has moved. Products are chosen per surface rather than per job. Every static port, pitot probe and vent is masked before anything touches the airframe, and each cover is accounted for on a checklist at handover.
Questions to put to any vendor
Including us. If a vendor cannot answer these plainly, that tells you more than the number at the bottom of their quote.
- Can you send your certificate of insurance, with the limits, before we go any further? General liability policies commonly exclude work performed on aircraft, so aviation-specific coverage is a different thing entirely, and an FBO can refuse ramp access to a vendor that cannot produce a COI at the limits it accepts. Ask for it issued direct from the broker to your risk or procurement contact rather than forwarded as a screenshot.
- What is the written scope, and what is explicitly excluded from it? A pre-sale job is where exclusions bite. If the belly, the wheel wells, the brightwork or a second correction pass are not in writing, assume they are not happening. Nothing should appear on the invoice that was not on the quote.
- Are you correcting the paint or washing it, and how do you decide what the paint can safely take? Many aircraft schemes are a polyurethane topcoat over primer with no sacrificial clear coat above the pigment, and the film that is there is finite. The answer you want describes assessing condition on the aircraft and proving the process on a test section before a machine goes over the whole airframe. A vendor who cannot describe that is about to find out on your paint.
- Which product goes on the Alcantara, which on the veneer, and which on the transparencies? The answer tells you what you need to know. Three different answers means they treat a cabin as several separate problems. One answer, or a pause, means one product is going on every surface — which is how Alcantara mats and how acrylic hazes.
- Who is actually on the stand, and who is the named crew lead on the day? Ask whether the crew is employed or subcontracted for this job, and who owns the handover. On a deadline-driven pre-sale you want one person accountable for the whole aircraft, not a number that reaches a dispatcher.
- What happens to the belly, the gear legs and the wheel wells, and what degreaser goes in there? This is where a buyer's inspector looks first and where the wrong chemistry does damage you cannot see. Aggressive automotive or industrial degreasers strip applied corrosion-inhibiting compound and attack seals, bushings and plating.
- If the listing date moves forward by a week, what changes? You want to hear about crew size, shift patterns and hangar access, and an honest answer about what will not fit. A vendor who says yes to any window without changing anything is planning to cut the parts you cannot see.
Questions we get
- Should the detail happen before or after the pre-purchase inspection?
- Before the listing photographs and before the buyer's first visit, because that is where presentation does its work. After any event that opens panels. A pre-buy, and the maintenance that usually follows it, leaves grease, adhesive residue, fastener marks and shop dust behind, so detailing ahead of one means paying for the same work twice. On most sales that means a presentation detail early and a shorter reset before delivery.
- Does detailing actually change what the aircraft sells for?
- It does not change the appraised value, and be sceptical of anyone who says it does. What it changes is time on market and your footing in the negotiation. A buyer who walks up to a dull leading edge and a stained belly starts hunting for what else was left, and every finding turns into a deduction request. Presentation is the visible evidence that the aircraft was looked after where nobody was checking.
- How far ahead of the listing photographs should we book?
- Give us the aircraft at least a week before the shoot if correction is in scope, and tell us the photographer's date when you enquire. Finishing on the morning of a shoot is possible and we do it, but it leaves nothing spare for weather, a tow or a hangar that is suddenly full.
- The aircraft is not in Atlanta. Can you still do it?
- Yes. We cover the Metro Atlanta fields — PDK, RYY, ATL, FTY and LZU — and travel out to 269 miles for scheduled work, which reaches most of Georgia. Tell us the field and the FBO handling the aircraft and we will confirm ramp access before quoting.
- Is paint correction overkill on an aircraft that is being sold?
- Sometimes, and we will tell you when it is. On a light scheme in fair condition, decontamination and a sealant photograph well. On a dark or metallic scheme, swirls and haze are the first thing a close-up finds, and correction is the difference between depth and a flat chalky grey.
- What if the buyer's inspector still finds something?
- Then it should be a mechanical finding rather than a housekeeping one. We photograph condition before and after, and anything that looks like it warrants a mechanic's attention is reported rather than cleaned past — so it reaches you before it reaches the other side's report.
Send the tail number, the airport and the FBO handling the aircraft, the type, and the date the photographs or the pre-buy are booked for. Photographs of the paint and the cabin help but are not required. You get a written scope with the exclusions stated plainly, and a straight answer on whether your deadline is realistic.
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Tail, airport, aircraft type and your deadline. That is enough for a written quote against a written scope.
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