Irish registered Italian/South American aircraft
 

Why are so many Italian and South American flown aircraft Irish registered and have been for such a long time....have the Italians got to I-ZZZZ already????

I've searched and can't find any answers.....

If you mean airliners, then they may well be leased from an Irish based leasing company: Look up Guinness Peat Aviation on Wikipedia, it explains a bit about the subject. I didn't know GPA had gone bust though...

Ireland offers the leasing companies favourable costs for registering their aircraft in the country. Bahamas and Bermuda are other such countries but do not have the leasing company home office base that Ireland does stemming from the old GPA days.

Most leased aircraft are registered in the country of their operation, and you would never know they were leased without looking at the plate, but there are some where this is not a good course. This can be for a range of reasons such as avoidance of substantial import duty. It is for this reason that all of the Western-built aircraft supplied to Russia in recent years are registered outside the country.

Another reason is avoiding difficulties repossessing the aircraft if the airline fails to keep up with payments. Some countries have legal processes which make it difficult for a foreign finance source to recover home-registered assets from a national business. I believe Italy falls into this category.

WHBM - thanks for that. I'm aware that the CAA get twitchy with foreign registered aircraft operating withing the UK but with a big leasing company on your turf then I suppose there needs to be some flexibility?

Cheers

I'm aware of all the hoops you have to go through with the CAA for foreign registered aircraft - used to know a Ukrainian-registered and crewed Turbolet operating in the summertime for a skydiving club in the UK.

Meanwhile The Irish IAA are ultra-bend over backwards to help. Following one recent proposal of theirs Ryanair said they would re-register all their fleet in Lithuania. End of proposal.

Another country which offers a lot of help to overseas-operated aircraft is France, which will do this for any Airbus aircraft needed to operate in a difficult territory (yes, Airbus is theoretically a European rather than a French organisation, but I am sure we all know the truth). There has always been separate French registrations for their overseas territories in the F-O... series, you will see many Airbus aircraft worldwide with these.