The offer is accepted. Now someone has to read the books.
A pre-buy is a records review under deal pressure. The airplane is a stranger, the logbooks are the seller’s, and the read has to hold up for a buyer writing a check. Reconstructing that history by hand can take a day, and the deal is waiting on it.
An unfamiliar tail
The shop has no history with the aircraft. Everything it knows has to come out of the seller's books.
Deadline pressure
The inspection is scheduled and the buyer wants an answer. The records read is the long pole.
The answer has to hold up
Whoever reads the review acts on it: the buyer negotiates, the IA signs, the shop stands behind it.
Send the records for one aircraft. Atlas does the reading and hands back what the paper shows, cited to the page.
A Status Determination, ready to hand over
A cited report of what the records show. File it, give it to the buyer, or walk an IA through it page by page. Every claim links to the scan it came from.
Status at a glance on a demo aircraft. Every status links back to the entry that supports it.
- LAST: NEVER means LAST: NEVER. If the paper holds no record an inspection was done, the sheet says so. Nothing turns green until the history supports it.
- Leverage for the buyer, cover for the shop. Overdue items and missing history surface before closing, each with the logbook page to back it up.
This is not a go / no-go. It is not a sign-off. It is the records, structured, so the A&P can make the call.
Runs on Cloudline Logbook. The same read sits under this report: parts with serial numbers, hours with their sources, every entry structured and searchable. See Logbook →
How a pre-buy records review runs
No special scanner and no new workflow. Send what you have, and what comes back is the report plus a living record for the next time the tail shows up.
The books show up
Photograph or upload the seller's records as PDF, JPG, PNG, HEIC, or TIFF. The first aircraft is onboarded by hand.
Atlas reads and checks
Every page classified and every entry indexed. ADs and SBs are checked against what the paper shows, and duplicates are dropped.
A mechanic reviews
Pages Atlas cannot read get flagged and held. Nothing unverified is treated as verified.
Report before the inspection
The Status Determination is typically ready before the mechanical inspection starts. From then on, that logbook stays current on its own.
The shop runs the review. The whole deal works from it.
The shop
Pre-buys and records reviews as paid work. Digitize the tail for this deal, and the record is already there for the annual, the next squawk, the next buyer.
The buyer and broker
A defensible read of the paper before you commit. You still want a mechanic on the airplane. This is the paperwork half.
The A&P / IA
The mechanical inspection is still yours. The paper questions arrive settled, each answer carrying its source entry.
Software reports facts. Mechanics make the call.
Cloudline shows you what the paperwork says and where it says it. The airworthiness determination stays with your certified A&P, and so does the sign-off.
Only what a source supports. Atlas only states domain facts it retrieved from a source. Thin evidence gets a low-confidence label.
Every run writes an evidence pack. Internal IDs are stripped. FAA identifiers, like AD numbers, are kept.
One-time, per aircraft. The Living Logbook is included.
First aircraft is free. We onboard it by hand. No subscription to see the report. Full pricing on the Logbook page →
Answers before you send a log set
Is this an official pre-buy inspection?
No. A pre-buy inspection is a mechanical inspection. This is the records review that sits next to it: what the logbooks show, cited to the page.
What if pages are missing or unreadable?
They go to a review queue. The status sheet will not treat an item as verified until the history supports it. Incomplete books produce an honest report that shows the gaps.
If the sale goes through, does the buyer get the record?
Yes. The record transfers with the aircraft, so the new owner starts with a current, structured logbook from day one.
How is this different from BetterPlane, Axe, or WingBook?
Those are owner apps: snap a page, search your own books, pay monthly. Cloudline is shop software. The first aircraft is onboarded by hand, every claim is cited, a mechanic reviews the read, and the price is one-time per tail.
How is this different from Bluetail?
Bluetail is built for bizav records, Part 135, and onsite scan networks. Cloudline is built for piston and turboprop GA shops that still live in paper logbooks.
Bring a real pre-buy log set
We’ll read it with you on your own aircraft, end to end, so you can see what the paper actually says.
Every page read · every claim cited · gaps reported as gaps