Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes What forms needed for Sale?

I am a private seller with a partner who is selling my plane to a buyer who is a company. Both the plane and the company are United States residents/entities, as are the pilots selling.

Can anyone tell me what form(s) I need other than the FAA's registration form, AC Form 8050-2? A call to my FSDO has yielded no help as of yet. Does the owner/buyer need to be present at the transfer or do we just sign the forms and turn them over to his representative (after collecting certified funds of course)?

Does anyone else think the FAA's website is about the most useless POS they've surfed to?

Thanks everyone!

Form 8050-2 is the right one. Things might have changed. I see that the form is now available for downloading [forms.faa.gov] . Back then, you had to ask the local FSDO to mail you the triplicate form.

Whichever format of the form you use, make sure the buyer or his rep signs it, and YOU mail it in yourself. That way, you can be sure that the aircraft is no longer registered to you. I think one club member sold his plane about a year ago and the buyer still hasn't sent in the registration change.

Interesting, the guy at my FSDO said the form I needed wasn't on the website and they had to mail it to me as it was a triplicate form.

Oklahoma said, I can do it however I want, even self-report the transfer and they'll investigate it if the guy doesn't send it in.

I used forms 8050-1 and -2. One is bill of sale, the other is registration. I'd do both.

You're right, Jeff. Form 8050-1 is the Registration, and it's not available for download. If I remember correctly, it's like a postcard. The 8050-2 is the Bill of Sale, if you want the FAA to record the selling price.

Don't forget the $5 registration fee.

And use a BLUE PEN so the dummies will know it's an original.

You're the seller, so it's not your issue...but for learning sake:

As I found out, the FAA allows transfer of ownership regardless of the title not being "clear" if the aircraft is sold within the US. By "clear", I mean without any liens of record...whether they've actually been released by the financial institution or not.

Impact on the seller of course is that if you don't do a title search, and there are encumberances (not sure if I spelt it right...but I like the word), you've bought them as well!

Oh crap, I guess that means I'm off to the FSDO tomorrow after all! The check and the plane are being swapped places tomorrow after work. I'll believe it when I have the check in hand. ;-)

Just my experience as a buyer, but since I had to finance, the paperwork was simplified some, well the FAA paperwork, not my IOU paperwork. All I did was hack out the terms of the Aircraft Purchase Agreement contract and sign/notarize for my records and have a legal basis for the terms of the transaction. The financing agency took care of the FAA paperwork (very timely I might add) and the FAA had it changed in their database in, oh... a month and a half. The mistake I made was to be very clear the funds weren't released until the delivered plane passed my local pre-buy. Luckily it was ok, but I technically ended up purchasing it before my inspections The AOPA website has an excellent page devoted to buying/selling (it didn't make me login, but let me know if you have toubles viewing it, I'll PM you a copy of a couple of the articles).

AOPA buyer/seller/owner information page [aopa.org]