N-Reg trustee International Air Services - any experience?
 

Hi everybody,

I just saw that an aircraft in which I'm interested in is registered in the USA through trough International Air Services as trustee.

Link: index

The website doesn't look too promising but the prices are the lowest I have ever seen, as they charge only £245 per year.
Searching the web for "International Air Services" quite a lot of planes come up which are registered through this company. They also claim that they would be in business since 1978.

Does anybody have experience with this company?

Cheers,

Oliver

Sorry not used them but I have used southern aircraft consultancy ( now near norwich )many times and I can recommend them

I use them for the ownership trust on my RV-4 (non-US citizen living in US).

No catch that I'm aware of. Bob Garretson seems a friendly and helpful guy and has responded quickly when I needed to get a new airworthiness certificate (change of limitations).

I certainly intent to stay with them.

It is a company which a number of people I know have looked at, but nobody has (as far as I recall) reached any conclusions.

I know of nothing adverse but it does not appear easy to find others who use it - except the chap above who is the 1st one.

S.A.C. is who I am with. The owner, Warren Chmura, died a couple of years ago in a car crash and IIRC his brother (also a US citizen) is now running it. A year ago I had the occassion to speak to an FAA lawyer about various matters (in a seminar) and S.A.C. came up, along with the general matter of N-reg trusts. The lawyer confirmed that they know S.A.C. well and work with them.

On the old question of the future of N-reg trusts the lawyer said they have no plan to stop the use of trusts, except to stop trusts which try to conceal the identity of the beneficial owner ("trustor" is US speak).

So I would check out whether this trust company complies fully with this, and also whether they provide the other services like the 3-yearly re-reg, obtaining radio licenses, passing on correspondence (and how much they charge for that), etc.

My research found over 100 N-reg aircraft in their name. I recognized one as someone I knew, so contacted them to check that all was as it seemed.

They register the aircraft with your name and address, so communications from FAA etc are no problem.

I don't see any reason to pay more.

IO540,

I don't think so. I'll check my paperwork later. I just know that they have a US corporation.

Bob Garretson spends most of the year at Long Beach, which was handy for me getting things done quickly.

Sadly, it didn't get me out of paying California use tax

Thanks for your replies so far.
I just figured that it's possible to search for N-numbers by name - 109 aircraft are currently registered through International Air Services:
Click

Southern Aircraft has however more than 500 aircraft registered:
Click

International Air Services Trustee's website is a pain. But then again initially £100 plus £245 is the lowest price I ever heard of for this kind of service. Currently they provide a even lower price for the first year: £99
Click

Southern Aircraft charges £450 per year, incl. VAT (International Air doesn't even mention if their price includes VAT).
In relation to the total costs of owning an aircraft, the difference between these two prices is almost negligible. On the other site - why wasting money?

I think I need to do some further investigation on this issue... :rolleyes:

Even if we will not buy this specific aircraft, we are probably going to buy some other N-registered aircraft within the next year, so that this question would come up again anyway.

The Long Beach address is a private one, nothing to do with IAS as a company, as far as I know.

I don't know how they define "doing business in a state".
I dealt with them through my UK address, which I still use as a mailing address.

No, I'm not a permanent resident, hence the need to use an ownership trust.

I don't know if the rules have changed, but when we first moved here 10 years ago, we set up a Delaware company & registered that as the aircraft owner with us as directors or chairman or ceo's. It was pretty straight forward.

No trustee/trust company or anyone else involved. Just for a Nanchang & a Citabria. Nothing fancy, and I think the company stuff only cost about $75 a year.

I vaguely recall that the individual trust company route requires 75% US ownership, which is normally a bunch of lawyers.

The individual trust company route is used almost universally on upmarket stuff (jets etc) and it protects you from the uncertainty which occurs if/when the trust company owner dies.

When Warren Chmura died, there was a lot of nail-biting. None of the 200-300 N-reg planes owned by SAC could be flown, AIUI, and I certainly did not fly mine.

There may also a general concern about who might end up controlling the company in such a case; some characters in aviation are totally unsavoury. Fortunately SAC came out fine.

So what exactly has happened?

I am with him and found him to be excellent to deal with, and very cost effective. Does everything it states on the tin. First class:ok:

IO540 wrote:

Why is that? I even didn't know that there might be a problem and kept on flying as normal.

An N-reg needs to be owned by a US citizen (or some other options; I think a green card holder is ok) and if he dies then the aircraft registration is invalid.

This is why upmarket hardware has individual trust companies where 75% of the share capital is owned by several US lawyers and 25% by you. That also meets the requirement, and if one of the lawyers kicks the bucket they just stick another one in there. If you kick the bucket, you don't care anyway, but the reg is legit because the ownership is now 100% US :E so the plane can be flown, sold, etc.

The only downside of the US trust stuff is that - the way the trust is normally worded - while the trustee cannot stop you enjoying the aircraft, he could (if bloody minded) stop you selling it.

In the past, some trusts gave you a pre-signed bill of sale (which in effect can be used to kill the trust by you and the trustee cannot stop you) at the outset but fairly predictably this renders the trust void and this was confirmed by an FAA lawyer I went to a while ago. The FAA said they had a good relationship with SAC and are entirely happy with their trusts etc. Obviously they would not give names of trust companies whom they didn't like...

Hmmm, thanks.

I worked with Warren and now with his daughter, found them both very helpful, honest and easy to work with and would not hesitate to recommend them.

I would suggest that it is wise to have a legal professional look over any legal document before you sign it. The downside with International Air Services is that they will not let you see the trust agreement before you have paid for it.

What do you mean 'full of holes'and whose trust??

If true, that is absolutely horrid.

How was it resolved?

Yes, that sounds not good. I can only give you my experience and that was excellent value for money, and the trust delivered everything I required at an extremely competitive price. My experience.

If anything changes I will post accordingly.