Did Hong Kong Registered Aircraft Have British Regs Before 1997

Registration and identification assigned to an individual aircraft by civil aviation government

Geographic map of registration prefixes

An aircraft registration, alternatively called a tail number ^{[ commendation needed ]}, is a code unique to a single shipping, required by international convention to be marked on the exterior of every civil aircraft. The registration indicates the aircraft'southward land of registration, and functions much like an car license plate or a transport registration. This code must also appear in its Certificate of Registration, issued by the relevant civil aviation potency (CAA). An shipping can merely have one registration, in i jurisdiction, though it is changeable over the life of the aircraft.

Legal provisions [edit]

In accordance with the Convention on International Civil Aviation (also known as the Chicago Convention), all ceremonious aircraft must be registered with a civil aviation authority (CAA) using procedures fix by each country. Every country, even those not party to the Chicago Convention, has an NAA whose functions include the registration of civil shipping. An aircraft can simply be registered once, in one jurisdiction, at a fourth dimension. The NAA allocates a unique alphanumeric string to identify the shipping, which also indicates the nationality (i.due east., country of registration^[1]) of the aircraft, and provides a legal document called a Certificate of Registration, one of the documents which must exist carried when the aircraft is in functioning.^[two]

The registration identifier must be displayed prominently on the aircraft.^[3] Virtually countries also require the registration identifier to be imprinted on a permanent fireproof plate mounted on the fuselage in case of a mail service-burn/postal service-crash aircraft accident investigation.

About nations' war machine aircraft typically use tail codes and serial numbers.^[four] Military aircraft most often are not assigned civil registration codes. However, regime-owned non-military civil aircraft (for example, aircraft of the United States Section of Homeland Security) are assigned civil registrations.

Although each shipping registration identifier is unique, some countries permit it to exist re-used when the aircraft has been sold, destroyed or retired. For example, N3794N is assigned to a Mooney M20F.^[five] It had been previously assigned to a Beechcraft Bonanza (specifically, the shipping in which Buddy Holly was killed). An private aircraft may be assigned unlike registrations during its existence. This can be because the aircraft changes buying, jurisdiction of registration, or in some cases for vanity reasons.

Choice of aircraft registry [edit]

Most often, aircraft are registered in the jurisdiction in which the carrier is resident or based, and may savour preferential rights or privileges as a flag carrier for international operations.

Carriers in emerging markets may be required to register shipping in an offshore jurisdiction where they are leased or purchased but financed by banks in major onshore financial centres. The financing institution may be reluctant to let the shipping to be registered in the carrier's dwelling house state (either because it does not accept sufficient regulation governing ceremonious aviation, or because it feels the courts in that state would not cooperate fully if information technology needed to enforce whatsoever security interest over the aircraft), and the carrier is reluctant to accept the aircraft registered in the financier's jurisdiction (ofttimes the United States or the U.k.) either because of personal or political reasons, or because they fear spurious lawsuits and potential arrest of the aircraft.

International standards [edit]

The first use of shipping registrations was based on the radio callsigns allocated at the London International Radiotelegraphic Conference in 1913. The format was a single letter prefix followed by four other letters (like A-BCDE).^[vi] The major nations operating aircraft were allocated a single letter of the alphabet prefix. Smaller countries had to share a single letter prefix, just were allocated exclusive use of the get-go letter of the suffix.^[6] This was modified by agreement by the International Agency at Berne and published on April 23, 1913. Although initial allocations were not specifically for aircraft simply for whatsoever radio user, the International Air Navigation Convention held in Paris in 1919 (Paris Convention of 1919) made allocations specifically for aircraft registrations, based on the 1913 callsign listing. The agreement stipulated that the nationality marks were to be followed by a hyphen then a grouping of four letters that must include a vowel (and for the convention Y was considered to exist a vowel). This organization operated until the adoption of the revised system in 1928.

The International Radiotelegraph Convention at Washington in 1927 revised the list of markings. These were adopted from 1928 and are the basis of the currently used registrations. The markings have been amended and added to over the years, and the allocations and standards accept since 1947 been managed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Article 20 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention), signed in 1944, requires that all aircraft engaged in international air navigation bears its appropriate nationality and registration marks. Upon the completion of the necessary procedures, the aircraft receives its unique "registration", which must be displayed prominently on the aircraft.

Annex vii to the Chicago Convention describes the definitions, location, and measurement of nationality and registration marks. The aircraft registration is made up of a prefix selected from the country's callsign prefix allocated by the International Telecommunication Spousal relationship (ITU) (making the registration a quick mode of determining the country of origin) and the registration suffix. Depending on the land of registration, this suffix is a numeric or alphanumeric lawmaking, and consists of one to five characters. A supplement to Annex 7 provides an updated list of approved nationality and common marks used by various countries.

Country-specific usage [edit]

While the Chicago convention sets out the country-specific prefixes used in registration marks, and makes provision for the means they are used in international ceremonious aviation and displayed on shipping, private countries also make further provision for their formats and the use of registration marks for intranational flight.

When painted on the aircraft's fuselage, the prefix and suffix are ordinarily separated by a dash (for example, YR-BMA). When entered in a flight programme, the dash is omitted (for example, YRBMA). In some countries that utilize a number suffix rather than messages, like the United States (Due north), South Korea (HL), and Japan (JA), the prefix and suffix are connected without a dash. Aircraft flying privately ordinarily utilize their registration equally their radio callsign, simply many shipping flying in commercial operations (especially charter, cargo, and airlines) use the ICAO airline designator or a visitor callsign.

Some countries volition permit an aircraft that will not be flown into the airspace of another country to display the registration with the state prefix omitted - for instance, gliders registered in Australia unremarkably display only the three-letter unique mark, without the "VH-" national prefix.

Some countries also operate a separate registry system, or apply a separate group of unique marks, for gliders, ultralights, and/or other less-common types of aircraft. For example, Germany and Switzerland both apply lettered suffixes (in the grade D-xxxx and HB-xxx respectively) for nigh forms of flight-craft merely numbers (D-nnnn and HB-nnn) for unpowered gliders. Many other nations register gliders in subgroups commencement with the letter G, such as Norway with LN-Gxx and New Zealand with ZK-Gxx.

Us [edit]

In the United States, the registration number is unremarkably referred to as an "N" number, because all shipping registered there have a number starting with the letter N. An alphanumeric system is used considering of the large numbers of shipping registered in the Us. An N-number begins with a run of one or more numeric digits, may end with 1 or two alphabetic letters, may only consist of one to five characters in total, and must start with a digit other than zilch. In addition, Northward-numbers may not contain the messages I or O, due to their similarities with the numerals 1 and 0.^[vii]

Each alphabetic letter in the suffix can take one of 24 discrete values, while each numeric digit can be one of ten, except the showtime, which can take on only one of nine values. This yields a total of 915,399 possible registration numbers in the namespace, though certain combinations are reserved either for government apply or for other special purposes.^[7]

The following are the combinations that could be used:

N1 to N9: Federal Aviation Assistants (FAA) internal use but^[seven]
N10 to N99: Federal Aviation Assistants (FAA) internal employ only^[7]
N100 to N999
N1000 to N9999
N10000 to N99999
N1A to N9Z
N10A to N99Z
N100A to N999Z
N1000A to N9999Z
N1AA to N9ZZ
N10AA to N99ZZ
N100AA to N999ZZ

An older aircraft (registered before 31 Dec 1948) may have a second letter of the alphabet in its identifier, identifying the category of shipping. This additional letter is not actually part of the aircraft identification (e.1000. NC12345 is the aforementioned registration as N12345). Aircraft category letters have not been included on any registration numbers issued since 1 January 1949, merely they still appear on antique aircraft for actuality purposes. The categories were:

C = airline, commercial and private
G = glider
L = express
R = restricted (such every bit cropdusters and racing aircraft)^[8]
Southward = state
X = experimental

For example, N-X-211, the Ryan NYP aircraft flown past Charles Lindbergh as the Spirit of St. Louis was registered in the experimental category.

In that location is a unique overlap in the United States with aircraft having a single number followed by two letters and radio telephone call signs issued past the Federal Communications Commission to Amateur Radio operators holding the Amateur Extra class license. For example, N4YZ is, on the one manus, a Cessna 206 registered to a individual individual in California, while, on the other hand, is also issued to an Amateur Radio operator in Due north Carolina. Since an aircraft registration number is too used as its call sign, this ways that two unrelated radio stations tin can have the same phone call sign.

Decolonisation and independence [edit]

The impact of decolonisation and independence on aircraft registration schemes has varied from place to place. Most countries, upon independence, have had a new allotment granted – in most cases this is from the new country's new ITU allocation, merely neither is it uncommon for the new state to be allocated a subset of their one-time colonial power's allocation. For example, after partition in 1947, India retained the VT designation it had received as office of the British Empire's Vx series allocation, while Pakistan adopted the AP designation from the newly allocated ITU callsigns APA-ASZ.

When this happens it is usually the case that aircraft volition be re-registered into the new series retaining as much of the suffix equally is possible. For instance, when in 1929 the British Dominions at the fourth dimension established their ain aircraft registers, marks were reallocated as follows:

Canada: One thousand-Cxxx to CF-xxx, then expanded to C-Fxxx, C-Gxxx, and then C-Ixxx in 1974.
Australia: G-AUxx to VH-Uxx, then immediately expanded to all VH-xxx marks.
New Zealand: Thousand-NZxx to ZK-Zxx, so immediately expanded to all ZK-xxx marks.
Newfoundland: G-Cxxx (with Canada) to VO-30, and then re-merged with the Canadian register in 1949 to CF-xxx.
South Africa: G-UAxx to ZU-Axx, and then expanded to all ZU-thirty marks, and so over again to current ZS-30, ZT-Rxx, and ZU-xxx allocations.
Hong Kong: VR-Hxx to B-HAA - B-HZZ/B-KAA - B-KZZ/B-LAA - B-LZZ after 1997.

Two oddities created by this reallocation procedure are the current formats used by the Special Administrative Regions of the People's Commonwealth of China, Hong Kong and Macau, both of which were returned to PRC control from Great britain in 1997 and Portugal in 1999 respectively. Hong Kong's prefix of VR-H and Macau'due south of CS-Grand, both subdivisions of their colonial powers' allocations, were replaced by China's B- prefix without the registration mark being extended, leaving shipping from both SARs with registration marks of simply 4 characters, every bit opposed to the norm of five.

Registration prefixes and patterns past countries [edit]

See too [edit]

Shipping charter
List of aircraft registration prefixes
Belgian shipping registration and serials
Listing of shipping by tail number
ITU prefix
United Kingdom aircraft registration
United Kingdom military machine aircraft serial numbers
The states military aircraft serials
United States war machine tail code

References [edit]

^ Article 17 of the Chicago Convention
^ Article 29 of the Chicago Convention
^ Article 20 of the Chicago Convention
^ "U.s.a. Air Forcefulness Tail Codes". Aerospaceweb.org. Retrieved four December 2015.
^ "N3794N". Registry.faa.gov. Archived from the original on 2019-eleven-29. Retrieved 2019-eleven-29 .
^ ^a ^b "Complete Civil Registers:1 Belgium". Air-United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland Archive. 1980 (one): 11. 1980. ISSN 0262-4923.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "Forming an N-Number". Faa.gov. 2015-03-xix. Retrieved 2016-09-14 .
^ Sean Elliott (March 2015). "What does restricted category accept to exercise with experimental". Sport Aviation: 11.

External links [edit]

Searchable worldwide registration database
Aruba Aircraft Register
Australian Aircraft Register
Austrian Shipping Register
Belgian Shipping Register
Brazilian Shipping Register
British Aircraft Register
Canadian Aircraft Register
Croatian Shipping Register^{[ permanent dead link ]}
Danish Aircraft Register
Dutch Aircraft Register
Dutch Historic Aircraft Registers
Finnish Aircraft Register
French Shipping Register
Guatemalan Aircraft Register
Indian Aircraft Register Archived 2014-12-24 at the Wayback Machine
International Registry of Mobile Assets, pursuant to the Cape Town Treaty
Irish Shipping Register
Isle of man Aircraft Register
Latvian Shipping Register
Lebanese Aircraft Register
Luxembourg Aircraft Register
Maltese Aircraft Registration
New Zealand Aircraft Register
Norwegian Shipping Register
Singapore Aircraft Annals
Due south African Aircraft Register Archived 2018-01-23 at the Wayback Machine
Swedish Aircraft Register
Swiss Aircraft Registry
Usa Shipping Registry
Article 20 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation
Annex 7 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation
Supplement to Addendum 7 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation