PMVULB AvMgr
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2003
- Posts
- 319
pilotmiketx said:"Hiding" airplanes as you put it is actually quite common for many people/entities. You'll find everything from 172s to 757s on the registry with obscure registered owners with addresses at some Delaware attorney's office.
The reasons are many, with liability being one of the biggies. If a judgement is made against the company, the airplane can't be used in the settlement and vice versa. I'm sure there are tax reasons as well.
Also, some public companies don't want shareholders knowing about their aircraft because they may be viewed as frivolous luxuries.
You are 100% correct. Those companies that choose to register their aircraft to LLC's or under bank names do that for the precise reason of keeping liability in case of a problem more than at arms length from the owning company. If you look at the FAA registry (link was indicated in an earlier message), and do a search on aircraft types, specifically G-4's or G-5's, I guarantee that most will come up with either banks (such as Wells Fargo) as the owner, or some obscure LLC made up by someone on the legal floor of the company actually owning the aircraft. There will be very few "true" company names listed which would be the name of the actual owner.
A terrific publication if anyone is interested that lists actual owners without the LLC's or bank fronts is JP Biz Jet 2005, put out by Brian Gates. Do a search on the web as to where to buy it.
If you were to look up N1LB and N250LB, Lehman's G-4's, they would actually be listed as Lehman Brothers/CES Aviation LLC, not just CES Aviation as indicated on the FAA site.
As far as explaining my name (PMVULB Avmgr), I'll leave figuring that out to those who are interested, I choose to remain behind that name. Let's call it my LLC!