A new FAA privacy policy could further delay U.S. aircraft registrations forcing buyers to temporarily register their aircraft with foreign entities.
A new FAA measure to safeguard the privacy of aircraft owners could further mire the aircraft registration process in more delay. At the height of the aircraft transaction season, the FAA has blocked public access to ancillary records for aircraft ownership that are often required to complete transactions. These include documents pertaining to trusts, estates, mergers, consolidations, distributions, powers of attorney, and limited liability company statements belonging to those registered in the Civil Aircraft Registry Electronic System.
However, the FAA will allow public access to a summary page of those records. Aircraft brokers and attorneys maintain that this is a half-measure that will further delay the U.S. registration of aircraft, which was already taking as long as six months, and likely force them to make time-consuming, individual requests for the records from the FAA general counsel’s office. In the interim, new owners may be forced to place aircraft on foreign registries such as Bermuda or Isle of Man in order to complete transactions, warns AIN contributor, aviation attorney, and NAFA member David Mayer, a partner in the Dallas-based firm of Shackleford, Bowen, McKinley & Norton.
This article was originally published by Mark Huber of AIN on December 27, 2022.