Registering EU Purchased Aircraft in Australia

[AeroGirl]

Hi All,

I am in the process of looking for a couple aircraft from Europe, and wanted to know if anyone had gone through registering a EU purchased aircraft here in Australia, what the experience was like, what you have to do, and any gotcha's.

AeroGirl

[Rich-Fine-Green]

- Check CASA website for a local type certificate or a local type acceptance certificate (in case the aircraft is unique to this region).

- Proper pre-purchase inspection by a reputable organisation.

- Check ALL documentation is in place (see above).

- Export CofA (sometimes not required, however, life is so much easier this end when an import arrives with a proper export CofA).

- Good Customs Agent (not a big expense but a paperwork snafu can strand an import at it's point of entry followed by expensive daily parking/storage fees)

- Fat Wallet :-).

[PhillC]

I'd recommend speaking to Michael Gordon from Paper Planes: Paper Planes (http://www.paper-planes.com.au)

I'm midway through a UK purchase, to ferry to Australia, and Michael's work has been thorough and I hope for no problems on arrival in Australia. The aircraft will leave the UK already on the VH reg.

If you are going to ferry the aircraft, rather than in a shipping container, and it's burning 100LL, be ready for a surprise on the cost!

[Tonym3]

Hi

In July 2012 I bought a P32R which was on the Spanish Register but lived in Portugal and flew it here. Blog of journey with track taken, cost of fuel etc can be found by googling saratogaferry (sorry - pprune scrubs the hyperlink).

I too put her onto the VH register before leaving Europe.

Getting her onto the Oz Register was the easy part. Getting it off the Spanish Register took the time, made more difficult by the fact that I don't speak Spanish, wasn't in Madrid. I put the contractual onus on the sellers to get it off the Spanish Register and held a big chunk of the payment (50%) until they did so.

The problem that presented was the timing. I thought the process in Spain would take a few days. It took 10 days and when you don't really know what's going on and you made plans based on a shorter timeframe, that delay can be kind of frustrating.

The ferry home was great fun. Not as cheap as boxing it up and putting it on a ship but an opportunity to fly across the world in SE lighty only comes along once in a while. I also couldn't find an easy way to feel comfortable about the dissassembly and packing in Portugal. If your plane is in the UK or Germany, I suspect freight might be an option you could take.

The only other problem I had was getting an independent pre-purchase inspection. Read the blog to see how I coped with that. Again, this might have been easier had the plane been in UK or Germany.

It has probably been advised to you that buying planes often presents unexpected costs and that you should have a good contingency fund. I needed about US$6K to solve a landing gear problem that presented itself half way across the mediterranean. This was a small portion of the contingency fund that I was mentally (and financially) prepared for.

I think there is a certain amount of luck in these things. Despite the hiccup, I am very happy with the deal and the experience. But I tell you that if things go bad in one of these imports, I can see how it could be very expensive and time consuming.

So good luck to you. PM me if you want to talk through the process in more detail. Other posters above have pretty much described it.

Tony