AP Enterprise: FAA loses track of 119,000 aircraft

[Gerald]

NEW YORK – The Federal Aviation Administration is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the U.S. — a gap the agency fears could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/10...-track-planes/


Note:Published December 10, 2010

[GoldenRivet]

Despite the date of publication this is fairly old news.

The FAA, some time in October, released an order that all aircraft had to be re-registered. Then, the registration would have to be renewed every 3(?) years after the initial registration.

There had previously not been a requirement to renew the registration that i am aware of, unless the aircraft had been sold or the owner had a change in permanent mailing address.

this renewal of registration is something they should have been doing all along. with FAA funding in the toilet and getting worse, a scant $5 fee for re registration every 3 years multiplied times nearly 400,000 aircraft comes out to $2M extra every few years. considering the registration renewals will be staggered (not all will renew at once) the cash flow will be fairly constant throughout the fiscal year on renewals alone.

[Gerald]

GR! What is the actual figure on the number of planes do you think,

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by Vendor

GR! What is the actual figure on the number of planes do you think,

the number of airplanes in the USA total?

I couldn't venture to guess, and i think the FAA would have to go through a massive restructuring of their registration system to provide any remotely accurate number.

the difficult thing about it is that every year new aircraft are introduced into the "fleet" and every year aircraft are destroyed due to accidents, scrapping, parting out etc. so it is a constantly expanding and contracting number.

I said "400,000 aircraft" in my last post based on the data in the article. 400,000 aircraft in the whole of the USA seems like a low number.

EDIT:

based on 5 minutes of google search i have seen numbers from 220,000 up to 375,000+ i dont know where these numbers are coming from or what sorts of aircraft they include (airline, private etc)

[Gerald]

GR! Do you think the FAA has fabricated figures appearing on the number of airplanes, I mean plan does not go into commercial operation, the number comes in then decline, and the new plan will be included in the registration, and it takes well over time for it to be completely updated.

[GoldenRivet]

I doubt there is any fabrication of numbers there. I can't see any reason for it.