Aircraft Sold Abroad While Under a Brazilian Export Airworthiness Certificate
A regional operator based in Goiás sells one of its Embraer EMB-110 aircraft to a buyer in a neighboring country. The Brazilian export certificate of airworthiness is issued on 3 March. The buyer's civil aviation authority issues its own certificate of airworthiness on 20 May, but the aircraft continues flying under its Brazilian registration until 14 June, when the transfer of registration is completed. In that window the Brazilian operator's continuing airworthiness management organization (CAMO) stops scheduling maintenance after 3 March, reasoning that the aircraft is 'no longer Brazilian.' On 2 June, an ANAC surveillance inspector finds the aircraft's airworthiness directive compliance status has not been reviewed since February, and one recurring inspection is overdue by eleven days. The operator argues that liability passed to the buyer on the delivery date.
1. Identify the point at which Brazilian continuing airworthiness responsibility ends and evaluate the operator's argument.
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The key fact is that the aircraft retained Brazilian registration until 14 June. Under the Chicago Convention and the Brazilian regulatory framework, the State of Registry is responsible for the continuing airworthiness of an aircraft on its register, and the operator's approved CAMO remains accountable for the airworthiness management of aircraft it manages until registration is transferred or the aircraft is removed from the Brazilian register. An export certificate of airworthiness is a document supporting export, not a deregistration instrument, and it does not extinguish the State of Registry's oversight obligations.
The operator's argument that liability passed on delivery confuses contractual risk transfer with regulatory responsibility. Commercial terms between seller and buyer cannot displace the public-law obligation attached to the registration. The CAMO should have continued scheduling and reviewing airworthiness directive status and recurring inspections until the transfer date, and should have documented a formal handover. The overdue inspection and the unreviewed directive status are therefore genuine findings attributable to the Brazilian operator.
2. The inspector must decide how to characterize the overdue inspection and the unreviewed directive status. Explain the reasoning that distinguishes the two findings.
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The two findings are not equivalent. The overdue recurring inspection is a concrete, dated non-compliance: a required maintenance task was not performed within its interval, which directly affects the validity of the airworthiness status. The failure to review airworthiness directive compliance is an omission in the management system, but its severity depends on whether any applicable directive actually fell due in the interval and whether the aircraft was operated in a non-compliant condition.
The inspector should therefore verify the directive status against the type certificate holder's published list before deciding. If no directive was due, the finding is a system weakness in the CAMO's planning process. If a directive was due and not embodied, the aircraft may have flown in an unairworthy condition, which escalates the matter toward suspension of the certificate of airworthiness and possible enforcement against the CAMO. The reasoning turns on evidence of actual airworthiness impact, not on the label the operator attaches to the events.
3. Recommend the corrective action plan the operator should submit, and explain how the inspector should judge its adequacy.
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An adequate plan should address three layers. First, immediate containment: perform the overdue inspection, reconcile airworthiness directive status against the type certificate holder's list, and record the aircraft's true configuration before any further flight. Second, process correction: amend the CAMO procedures so that export, sale, or anticipated transfer triggers a defined 'transition maintenance plan' that keeps scheduling active until the registration transfer is evidenced by a document, not by a delivery date. Third, accountability: assign a named post-holder to confirm deregistration or transfer in writing and to close the maintenance programme handover.
The inspector should judge adequacy by whether the plan closes the root cause rather than only the symptom. A plan that merely performs the missed inspection leaves the same gap open for the next sale. The inspector should also require evidence of implementation, such as a revised procedure with an effective date and a sample of the transition file, before accepting closure.