# Civil Aviation Security and Safety Act of 2021: Plain Language Summary

This bill tightens security and verification requirements for people and companies that register aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration. Right now, the aircraft registration process is relatively simple—someone can register a plane with minimal personal information and without much verification. This bill aims to close loopholes that criminals, drug traffickers, and sanctioned foreign entities have allegedly used to hide aircraft ownership and move money illegally.

The bill requires aircraft owners to provide much more detailed information when registering a plane, including their name, address, date of birth, driver's license or pilot's license number, and a photo. If a company or organization owns the aircraft, the bill requires the same information for anyone who owns more than 25 percent of it. The FAA must then check this information against government sanctions lists to make sure they're not registering planes to people or organizations that are under U.S. sanctions. The bill also prevents the FAA from issuing registrations to anyone on the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list.

Beyond individual registrations, the bill creates a task force bringing together the FAA, Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security, and Treasury Department to work together on aircraft security issues. It requires the FAA to modernize its computer systems so that aircraft ownership information is stored in a way that makes it easier for law enforcement and national security agencies to spot suspicious patterns. The bill also increases registration fees to pay for all this extra verification work and creates a process for suspending or revoking dealer certificates when violations occur. Overall, the changes make it much harder to hide who actually owns an aircraft and easier for federal agencies to catch misuse of the registration system.

Civil Aviation Security and Safety Act of 2021

Lynch, Stephen F.

Civil Aviation Security and Safety Act of 2021 This bill revises and sets forth new requirements for the registration of civilian aircraft. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must conduct a comprehensive review of the process under which it reviews and approves aircraft registration applications and dealer certificates. The bill revises application requirements for aircraft registration to include name, address, date of birth, driver's license or pilot's license (or both if applicable), and applicant photos in the submission of an application. Additionally, the FAA must <ul> <li>review Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions data on applicants;</li> <li>ensure that all eligibility and registration information in an application is true and correct before issuing a registration or dealer certificate;</li> <li>increase the fees for registration to a level sufficient to cover the costs to collect and verify applicant data and the costs of inflation;</li> <li>provide to the Drug Enforcement Administration declarations of its international operations to maximize the ability of federal national security and law enforcement agencies in preventing use of the Civil Aviation Registry for illicit purposes and detecting trade-based money laundering and other cross-border schemes;</li> <li>implement an enforcement mechanism for suspending and revoking dealer certificates; and</li> <li> establish an Aircraft Registry Task Force to examine national security, law enforcement, and public safety issues related to civil aircraft registration and develop solutions to mitigate security and safety risks and increase interagency cooperation.</li> </ul>