Getting your plane on the Aircraft Registry is important. That will help to make sure that you’re flying legally and safely. However, it’s important to stay on the renewal, too. That registration expires. When it does, you want to make sure that you maintain it. If you don’t, you won’t be able to legally fly. The FAA says “any owner that fails to comply with these requirements prior to the expiration of their current certificate has no authority to operate the aircraft until it has been properly reregistered.” In this blog, we’ll cover how to renew your registration with the FAA, what to look for on the form, and some other general advice.
About FAA Registry Renewal
Typically, your airplane registration expires in three years. So, you have three years from the time you registered the plane or when you last renewed it. Of course, you don’t want to always let this go until the last minute. We don’t want you to have to deal with that stress and neither does the FAA. To that end, they set a “registration renewal date-to-file.” This is scheduled five months before the expiration date of your registration. You might think “that feels kind of early.” The point is for you to file then so that your renewal gets there before your registration runs out.
Renew Safely and Correctly
The other reason for the five and a half months is that these forms aren’t always easy to fill out. There’s a lot of information that goes into these forms, which means that there’s a lot of information that could be filled out incorrectly. When these forms are filled out incorrectly, the FAA sends them back to you. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the date your registration ends. If your registration gets sent back to you due to some typo or error and your registration ends, you can be out of luck. Obviously, we don’t want that to happen to you.
Fixing Errors Ahead of Time
At the National Aviation Center, we don’t want you to ever be grounded due to your registration. So, we make it as easy as we can to fill out your forms. When you go to the FAA renewal forms on our site, you can just fill in the blanks. Click on the blank you want to fill in, and then type it in. It’s that easy. That removes any possibility of spelling something incorrectly while writing in pen. Or alternately, if you’re someone who maybe doesn’t have the best handwriting, it makes certain that no one will misread or misinterpret a letter or word.
Further Error Protection
To make it even more likely that your forms will go through properly the first time, we look them over. That means that our professionals will go through your forms and make sure that everything is filled out exactly as it should be. We’ve been in this business for a long time. We know what the FAA is looking for in these forms and we know the kinds of errors they catch that get forms returned. So, when we go through your forms, we can find the errors that they would flag and correct them.
It’s easy to feel like the time for registration renewal has “snuck up on you,” as the registration lasts for three years. However, the FAA does send a courtesy notice six months prior to the expiration date. The catch is, of course, that the FAA sends this to the last or most recent mailing address they have on file. If they don’t have your most recent address, then you may not get this form. We understand that this can all be a bit confusing. To make it easier on our clients, we’re always glad to take your phone calls.
With the penalties for failing to renew your registration so steep, it’s natural to feel like you want to send in your renewal as quickly as possible. However, the FAA doesn’t want you to do that. The earliest you can file your renewal, whether through our site or otherwise is six months before your aircraft registration’s expiration date. If you try to send it in earlier than that, they may send it back to you in hopes that you’ll send it in again at the right time. Typically, they’ll do that if you send it in 30 days before the six month warning for your expiration date.
To get your registration renewal forms (or any other necessary aviation forms) come to our site. There, you’ll find essentially all of the forms that you could need for your aircraft registration. Whether you’re renewing your registration, registering it for the first time, or anything else, don’t hesitate to call us at (800) 357-0893.