Old card?

This is happening because in January 2023 the FAA changed the registration period from three years to seven years. The FAA was supposed to mail out registration cards with the new expiration date to aircraft owners, but for one reason or another, many aircraft owners did not get the new registration certificate. In talking to members, it seems that many of them have the address on their aircraft registration as somewhere other than where they normally receive mail, such as a business or LLC address, and that is where the FAA will mail the new registration card. It’s important to be able to access the mail that is sent to the address on your aircraft registration for this reason. Another suspicion of mine as to why people aren’t getting the new registrations is that the FAA mails them out without a return address, which I think makes it easier to get lost along the way or get mistaken as junk mail and thrown away. That’s why I tell members to check the expiration date on their registration the next time they go to their airplane because I’m sure many of them are flying with old registration cards. If you check your registration and find it has the old expiration date on it, the FAA has a procedure for requesting a new registration card online.

Mark Milkovitz is a senior aviation technical specialist in the AOPA Pilot Information Center.