CASA Director of Aviation Safety and CEO Pip Spence this week explained the reasoning behind introducing the new annual aircraft registration fee.
Spence made the comments to a plenary session of the 2026 RAAA Convention held in Cairns, saying the new measure announced in the Federal Budget was not about raising funds, but about trying to improve the integrity of the Australian Civil Register.
“To be clear, this is not a revenue-raising exercise,” she said. “We have a register of VH aircraft, which, even when we’ve done surveys, we don’t have full confidence about what’s in that register.
“The aim of the annual registration is to make sure we do have a comprehensive picture about how many operational aircraft are in Australia and what the make-up of that fleet actually is. That will help us in terms of safety, communications; help us to work out where to prioritise our efforts.”
With a one-time registration fee, there has been little incentive for owners of decommissioned aircraft to update the register, thereby freeing up registration numbers and providing a greater picture of the number of active aircraft in Australia.
Spence said the fee was not expected to be a large cost impost on owners.
“We will be consulting on what sort of principles will apply behind that,” she explained. “Based on the estimates at the moment we think it will cost around $1 million per annum to run the system, so we’re looking at, if we did a flat rate, around $100 per aircraft, so it’s not a large number bolstering our coffers.”
Spence also said that the regulator was looking to review and overhaul the fees program, which they believe has been in place for nearly 20 years, but the industry would be consulted before any changes were put in place.