Our professional team of experts can provide assistance with a number of services in connection with the aviation industry including the incorporation of the appropriate corporate structures, registration of aircraft and aircraft mortgages, co-ordination of aircraft financing transactions, tax structuring and administration and acting as the resident agent in Malta on behalf of aircraft owners and operators.
The chief attractions of Malta's regulatory and legal regime relating to aircraft are as follows:
- Applicability of the Cape Town Convention provides financiers with a higher degree of protection and more effective enforcement remedies whilst allowing lower borrowing costs
- Availability of a wide range of airline services (airplane and engine maintenance, repair and overhaul, aircraft management, aircraft maintenance training and other ancillary support services)
- Broad registration possibilities for all airplanes, whether used for private or commercial air transport
- Competitive minimum depreciation periods for aircraft
- Extensive network of double taxation treaties; and no taxable fringe benefits arising from the private use of the aircraft by non-resident individuals who are shareholders, employees or officers of companies involved in the international transport of goods or passengers
- Facilitation of enforcement of mortgages and other security interests
- No withholding tax on lease payments where the lessor is not a tax resident of Malta
- Tax refunds to shareholders on distribution of profits
- Transparency of all rights and interests in aircraft
Malta Aircraft Registration Eligibility Rules
An aircraft may be registered in Malta by any of the following persons:
- an owner who also operates the said aircraft;
- an owner of an aircraft under construction or temporarily not being operated or managed;
- an operator of an aircraft under a temporary title; or
- a buyer of an aircraft under a conditional sale or title reservation agreement or similar agreement, and who is thereby authorised to operate the vessel.
The Aircraft Registration Act
The Aircraft Registration Act of 2010 came into power on 1st October 2010 and its main goal is to regulate the registration of aircraft, the registration and enforcement of aircraft mortgages and the implementation of the Cape Town Convention and the Aircraft Protocol and its interface with Maltese law.
The Act introduced new concepts such as the recognition of fractional ownership of aircraft in the sense that aircraft shares and interests may be identified on registration and verified in the National Aircraft Register accordingly.
Registration can take place either by the owner itself or by the operator of the aircraft such as the lessee or by a buyer under a title reservation agreement authorised to operate the aircraft or a conditional sale, or by a trustee for the benefit of beneficiaries.
Also unlike many other jurisdictions, it is now possible to register aircraft under construction as soon as the aircraft is "uniquely identifiable" and the requirements relating airworthiness surveys are suspended until the finishing point of the airplane.