Washington, DC

NBAA applauds FAA decision allowing electronic filing of aviation documents

The FAA recently published its final rule allowing online submission of aircraft registration, though the new rule still allows for original document filing.

“The FAA is modifying FAA regulations in a way to help the industry do business with today’s technology,” said Scott McCreary, aircraft practice group leader at McAfee & Taft and a member of NBAA’s Tax Committee and Regulatory Industry Advisory Group.

“As of now, the FAA has simply changed the governing regulations to allow use and submission of electronically executed documents and manually executed copies in certain circumstances, but it has not yet implemented the changes,” he added. “Once fully implemented, possibly by the end of the year, the system will accept documents, digitally executed and manually executed, electronically through the CARES (Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services) portal.”

In some cases, certified or true copies will be needed. However, it is expected that modernization of the system will speed up the process and reduce what often have been monthslong delays in processing aircraft registrations. A companion regulatory change also allows the FAA to email the completed registration certificates, he added.

“The regulatory change streamlines the FAA’s system quite a bit where they don’t have to generate a hard copy printed certificate and mail it to the registered owner,” said McCreary. “It also eliminates the need for the prior registered owner selling an aircraft, who is no longer the owner, to pull that hard card, sign it and mail it back to the FAA for processing. Electronic registration will eliminate a lot of those steps and costs by allowing for a lot of that processing to be done automatically.”