The Importance of Aircraft Registration
Registration is the foundation of an aircraft's legal existence in aviation: only an aircraft entered in the state register acquires the possibility of lawful flight, and the certificate issued for it confirms conformity with safety requirements. Under Article 22 of the Air Code of Georgia, every airworthy aircraft is subject to compulsory state registration with the issue of an appropriate certificate. A civil aircraft is registered in the state register of civil aircraft or in the register of ultralight aircraft, and only aircraft holding an airworthiness certificate are entered in the state register. The register of state aircraft is kept by the Ministry of Defence, while experimental aircraft are not registered in the state register — they are recorded with the organizations carrying out test-design or scientific-research flights.
The administrative side of registration is likewise distributed in the law itself: the rules of registration, recording and removal from the state register for civil aircraft are established by the Agency, which bases the keeping of the register precisely on those rules. A special rule concerns amateur-built aircraft: an aircraft made by non-industrial means with a mass of no more than 1000 kilograms (apart from an ultralight aircraft) must be registered with the appropriate aviation-sports service. The route of registration is thus determined by the aircraft's status and mass, and choosing that route is the very first step of the procedure.
Nationality and the Single-Registration Rule
Under Article 24 of the Code, an aircraft registered in the appropriate state register of Georgia is deemed national. The fundamental rule is that an aircraft may not be registered in more than one state. A dispute concerning nationality may be resolved by agreement between the interested states or through an international mediating court.
The single-registration rule has direct practical consequences for cross-border transactions: before acquiring, leasing or importing an aircraft, the register data of the state of registration must be verified, since the same aircraft cannot lawfully stand in two registers at once. A dispute over nationality is resolved either by agreement of the interested states or through an international mediating court, which means that registration questions may outgrow a purely administrative frame and acquire an interstate dimension. For an owner planning international operation, the register entry is thus not a formality but an element of the aircraft’s legal identity.