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Mike McNamara has been piloting planes since high school and running a Lunken Airport-based aviation consulting business for 20 years. He believes he can make just about anything fly - including his 2-year-old dot-com.
PlaneQuest.com, at its most basic level, is a paid classified advertising service for people selling private planes. But it combines technology with McNamara's expertise to offer more.
There is a spreadsheet to compare the features of up to 20 planes at a time, including everything from Federal Aviation Administration data on maintenance and accidents to carpet color and seat upholstery. And there is a unique interactive calculator for figuring operating costs and comparing them with national averages for a type of plane.
PlaneQuest fact sheets outline the regulated buying and selling process, step by step, and the "sky guys" post answers to e-mailed questions. Soon, the site will offer quotes and shopping for life insurance policies for pilots and passengers, which can be difficult to get.
"People buy airplanes the same way we buy cars - by circling classifieds. But when you get to the kind of investment thats involved in buying an airplane, to go about it in a haphazard way is not wise. It's not the way they would do other things in their businesses," McNamara said.
PlaneQuest is designed to help airplane shoppers - usually wealthy, highly educated and business-savvy - make informed decisions.
"Obviously, someone who is buying an airplane has the...