Updated . Educational only — not tax, legal, or lending advice. Confirm figures with your CPA, the state revenue department, and a lender before you close.
The FAA Cares Who the Owner Is. The Lender Cares Who Pays.
Only certain persons may register an aircraft on the U.S. Civil Aircraft Registry. U.S. citizens qualify. A non-U.S. citizen generally does not register in their own name. One accepted path is a trust whose trustee is a U.S. citizen, with the foreign person as beneficiary. That is a registration structure. It is not credit. How the lender underwrites the trust is on trusts and loan approval.
What counsel actually drafts
- A trustee who will sign FAA filings and who meets the citizenship test.
- A trust that lets the trustee grant a lender a security interest. Some “friendly” trust forms forbid exactly that.
- A beneficial owner the lender can identify for compliance. The trust does not hide the owner from a bank.
Do not download a generic trust and file it. Registration mistakes unwind closings. Use aviation counsel, then send the draft to the lender before the seller’s deadline. Changing the trust after the FAA has accepted it, because lender’s counsel wants one sentence, is a common delay.
A non-citizen trust does not cancel use tax where the aircraft is based, and it does not make a foreign lender’s judgment easy to collect. Those are separate problems, covered on cross-border collateral.
Questions buyers actually ask
Can a U.S. corporation with foreign owners register?
Sometimes, if it meets the FAA’s citizenship tests, including voting control. That is a counsel question, not a form you guess at.
Does the trustee have to be the lender?
No. Some programs offer that. It is negotiated. Do not name a lender as trustee in a document they have not agreed to.