Results indicate that financially distressed airlines sell aircraft that have a lower life expectancy and lower productivity. We combine the two effects into a quality impairment adjustment that explains around one half of the raw liquidation discount. For the remaining discount of around 9%, we find no direct evidence of misallocation to lower productivity users and industry outsiders. Rather, the post-sale users of distressed aircraft have significantly higher productivity than the distressed sellers, while their productivity is similar to that of other (non-distressed) users. In summary, our results indicate that the inefficiencies associated with fire sales are likely to be lower than have been previously documented.