Member buys a cardinal

He recently bought a 1976 Cessna 177B. We asked what inspired him to make the purchase, and about his experience using AOPA Finance:

“I did a lot of renting from my local home base. I hadn’t really intended to buy—it was never on my radar until about six months ago when I started to calculate what I was paying to fly around the Pacific Northwest in rental airplanes. Then I started thinking about this fiftieth birthday cross-country trip I want to make back to Wisconsin. I also got a little inspired by one of my friends at work. He had a Cardinal, and he took me up five or six years ago. He got me leaning toward Cardinals.

“I was looking for something that was IFR-ready, so I didn’t have to do any upgrades. I had several Cardinals I was looking at from an equipment, quality, and cost perspective. But this tail number ended in JK, which are my initials, and I said, ‘OK, I think I need to look at this one a little bit more.’

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t know how to buy an airplane. I get AOPA Pilot magazine, and I’m a pretty religious reader of the articles online. I thought: hey, I feel connected to AOPA. I really like what they do as an organization.

“So, I just reached out and said, ‘This is what I’m interested in. What do I do?’ It kind of rolled from there. It was really, really a great experience, to be honest. I would have struggled to do it without AOPA.

“They connected me with the lender and escrow service, and checked in with me as my loan progressed through each stage. I felt like I had an agent working for me.

“AOPA’s portal was pretty straightforward, getting all the documents and submitting them. Overall, I had a really great experience. AOPA really helped me. They laid out clearly what I was going to have to do. I couldn’t have imagined it being easier without their support.”

aopafinance.com
800-62-PLANE (75263)