Importing Canadian aircraft into US

Steve Foley wrote:

[...] Canadian registered 206 and am importing it into the US.
The aircraft just had an annual, but the owner doesn't have
insurance on it, so the option of having him fly it to the US
isn't there.

Where is it written that insurance is required to fly in the US?

Unless the airplane is already sitting on the border, it would have to
fly some way within canadian airspace. *That* is forbidden without
insurance.

- FChE

Frank is right - in Canada you need liability insurance to fly. Even
if you're flying a N-numbered aircraft up there, you'll legally need
liability.

I was able to find out some info from talking to several branches of
the FAA and Transport Canada. I'll first beg the current owner to get
insurance on it and fly it to the states. Otherwise, I'll have to keep
it in Canada, deregister it, get it registered with the US and stick an
N-number on it. Then I'll need a special flight authorization from
Transport Canada to fly to the border and another one from the local
FSDO to fly from the border to my desired airport in the states.

After that, I'll need to get the equivalent of an annual and have a DAR
come out and inspect the plane. He says it should take a 1/2 day and
cost $500+travel. I found out that it had an airworthiness certificate
in the US (for the first 9 hours), so I won't need to have Cessna get
one of its reps to issue an "original" airworthiness cert. The only
thing my A&P will need to do is put together a 337 for the Robertson
STOL and hopefully the DAR will issue a CofA on the spot.

I've been told that when importing to the US, there is no import or
excise tax. Some states will tax the plane, but I believe that this
would happen is you bought a plane in the US as well. If the plane was
being imported to Canada, you'd be paying 7% for PST.

So, the bottom line is that it doesn't look like it will cost much $$
and should be done in a reasonable amount of time as long as any mods
on the aircraft were done correctly and have the supporting docs.

I'll try to post what actually happens here when I get done.

Wish me luck!

Shad

On 13 Apr 2006 15:04:27 -0700, "Shad"
wrote:

Did this several years ago. Make sure the airplane meets the type
certificate to the T. All paperwork for all modifications must be in
order. The DAR for my conformity inspection consisted of 10 minutes
looking at the airplane, maybe an hour looking at the paperwork and an
hour+ BS'ing with my IA....

More data points:

The DAR I used (he was local) charged $200.

Didn't have to pay any excise or import tax, but I did have to pay use
tax (Washington State).

You can't do a "nation-wide" title search in Canada. You have to do
a title search in each province in which the aircraft was based /
owned. Not the biggest deal in the world I guess, but it just made
for several more hoops to jump through (as well as a few more
C-notes spent).

If I would have had to pay my IA by the hour to prepare the aircraft
for the conformity inspection, any "benefit" of buying an airplane
in Canada (as in lower price / exchange rates for example) would
have been easily wiped out by his bill for his time....

Would I import an airplane from Canada again? Possibly... if
the price was right and it was a desirable aircraft... but I'd only
do it after I got my IA drunk 1st and then talked him into it! 8^)

Bela P. Havasreti

Frank is right - in Canada you need liability insurance to fly. Even
if you're flying a N-numbered aircraft up there, you'll legally need
liability.

I was able to find out some info from talking to several branches of
the FAA and Transport Canada. I'll first beg the current owner to get
insurance on it and fly it to the states. Otherwise, I'll have to keep
it in Canada, deregister it, get it registered with the US and stick an
N-number on it. Then I'll need a special flight authorization from
Transport Canada to fly to the border and another one from the local
FSDO to fly from the border to my desired airport in the states.

After that, I'll need to get the equivalent of an annual and have a DAR
come out and inspect the plane. He says it should take a 1/2 day and
cost $500+travel. I found out that it had an airworthiness certificate
in the US (for the first 9 hours), so I won't need to have Cessna get
one of its reps to issue an "original" airworthiness cert. The only
thing my A&P will need to do is put together a 337 for the Robertson
STOL and hopefully the DAR will issue a CofA on the spot.

I've been told that when importing to the US, there is no import or
excise tax. Some states will tax the plane, but I believe that this
would happen is you bought a plane in the US as well. If the plane was
being imported to Canada, you'd be paying 7% for PST.

So, the bottom line is that it doesn't look like it will cost much $$
and should be done in a reasonable amount of time as long as any mods
on the aircraft were done correctly and have the supporting docs.

I'll try to post what actually happens here when I get done.

Wish me luck!

Shad

Thanks for the clarification.

I had ASS-U-ME-d that since it 'just had an annual' it was legal to fly in
Canada

"Frank Ch. Eigler" wrote in message
...

Steve Foley wrote:

[...] Canadian registered 206 and am importing it into the US.
The aircraft just had an annual, but the owner doesn't have
insurance on it, so the option of having him fly it to the US
isn't there.

Where is it written that insurance is required to fly in the US?

Unless the airplane is already sitting on the border, it would have to
fly some way within canadian airspace. *That* is forbidden without
insurance.

- FChE