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I hadn't thought much about that aspect until that recent aviation news
thing on it, but I am guessing you're right. It may not really be about
collecting fees for ATC actions (although it could be), but with all of
the recent fuss from CPB and the ATF, I'm guessing that a little
bit of "national security" hub-bub was involved in the discussions of
why we need this. They're probably paying real close attention to
aircraft ownership of US registered planes by non-US citizens.
I can see the point however about purging the database of records.
It seems in every list I've ever maintained where people were supposed
to update me, I've ended up with dozens and dozens of invalid
records. In the days where I had to direct mail people, this meant
that I'd waste money on postage and etc. As long as the fee to
renew is cheap, it isn't a real problem. $5 is one thing, $100 is
another.
As far as my renewal went, I just went to the web, did my renewal,
I think I paid by credit card, and it was sent to me promptly. It didn't
take long to do and I didn't have a bad experience like some LML
listers did. Lets just hope that it was because of the process being
new...maybe it won't be so bad.
Tim
On 7/21/2013 8:12 PM, Paul Miller wrote:
I think the intent is far more reaching than to purge non-flying aircraft from the database. It is likely to get a grip on aircraft registered to foreign entities through US trusts and many of these aircraft operate overseas and are controlled by non-US persons. While these are typically allowed and approved in the past by the FAA, the latest news releases indicate the IG auditor is criticizing the FAA for not having enough data and control on who controls these trusts. The Trusts are now being withheld as I read. With each country going after revenue grabs for N-registered aircraft abroad, I suspect a revenue grab domestically for "foreigners" using the label of "N" will appear some day and it will be more than $5.
Anytime someone creates a database of owners of objects, the government finds a way to collect revenue on those assets. Canada (my country) does that now with the aircraft registry on each flight and its not hard to imagine how it might play out when the database is complete with newly confirmed mailing addresses of all flying N-registered aircraft. I think it is inevitable that owners of aircraft are going to be asked to pay to fly just as we are in Canada and owners are in Europe. But, you have to have a database of verified billing addresses before you can send out invoices.
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