CAA foreign aircraft register
 

Just come across this page on their website

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?ca...=90&pageid=124

Looks like they sell a CD with various foreign aircraft registry information on it.

Curious as to why?

The data has been in the public domain, piecemeal, for years thanks to the millions of plane spotters who log movements and stuff them into movement log websites.

Presumably one use is IFR route billing, for planes over 1999kg. But how is route billing addressed? With say an N-reg, all that one gets is a U.S. address. How does Eurocontrol work out where to send the very first invoice? Is this CAA database complete with the home addresses of every owner, even if foreign reg? Route billing seems to be an admin nightmare, the moment one moves away from EU-reg planes.

IO540, I was thinking about the same thing, as from this trip I just took, one stop was just outside Montreal, actually just on the otherside of the river, and my pax agreed to pay the landing fee, we were told that the landing fee would be biled to the tail number, that is in Texas. This ought to be interesting, especially for the Canadian billing for ATC service.

Well, it works over there, where the address of a N American N-reg taken from the database will most likely be the owner himself.

Same in the UK, where G-INFO will usually yield the address of the owner - or perhaps his accountant if he was smart enough to give his ltd co. registered office ;) That is the address to which all the junk mail (GASIL, GASCO etc) and some relevant stuff like ADs, get mailed to.

What puzzles me is how route charges work in foreign lands e.g. an N-reg flying in Europe.

The obvious answer is that Eurocontrol send the bill to the address in the FAA database, which ends up with the trust company, which (for a fee of say £30) forwards the bill to the beneficial owner, who then a) pays it and b) tells Eurocontrol his real home address for future billing.

Anyway, I was curious why the CAA is selling this particular database. The only other apparently reasonable user is Eurocontrol and they must already have one.