Homebuilts Deregistered in 2018
About ten years ago, the FAA instituted a mandatory re-registration process for aircraft owners. Every three years, owners have to re-register their aircraft. If they fail to do so, the aircraft's registration is cancelled.
This has always had a big effect on the homebuilt ranks...in fact, in the first cycle of the process, almost a quarter of the homebuilts were removed from the FAA registry.
The number has been rising again... it was up to 2700 in 2018, which was a tenth of the entire fleet.
What was interesting was the *types* of homebuilt de-registered. I had expected a lot of older designs...projects never completed, planes scrapped years ago, etc. But there was a surprising number of "modern" kit aircraft in the mix as well.
Here's a summary of the planes de-registered in 2018:
Aircraft Type |
# Deregistered in 2018 |
Avid |
51 |
Baby Ace |
33 |
Bede |
21 |
Bensen |
53 |
Bowers Fly Baby |
20 |
Challenger |
93 |
Glasair |
38 |
Glastar |
32 |
Kitfox |
111 |
KR-1/KR-2 |
33 |
Lancair |
57 |
Midget Mustang |
28 |
Monnet (Except Sonex) |
42 |
Murphy |
20 |
Pietenpol |
32 |
Pitts |
68 |
Rans |
63 |
Rotorway Helicopters |
73 |
Rutan Designs |
92 |
Searey |
21 |
Sonex (Including Waiex) |
32 |
Steen Skybolt |
25 |
Stits |
19 |
Stolp Starduster |
29 |
Thorp T-18 |
19 |
Vans (All) |
214 |
Velocity |
17 |
Zenair |
98 |
The types shown are basically from a "rough cut" of looking at the registered make and model and identifying the more-common name for the aircraft. There are probably more in most of the types.
This data is from the January 2019 FAA database.
Ron Wanttaja