More than £900,000 and zero planes... Jersey Aircraft Registry finally axed

Monday 31 October 2022

The ill-fated Jersey Aircraft Registry has been officially axed after losing its final aircraft last week.

Economic Development Minister Deputy Kirsten Morel said the decision was based on JAR's "commercial underperformance, which does not represent value for Jersey taxpayers".

He said that "additional investment would be needed to enhance its regulatory compliance" - something the Government is not offering to provide.

The Government originally spent £860,000 setting up the JAR, and it's understood that annual insurance costs were approximately £9,000 per year.

Since its launch in 2015, just four aircraft have been registered. Amid difficulties in attracting aircraft, the registry relaunched in 2018 and 2021.

The latest relaunch saw the JAR brand itself as the "world's first" to use blockchain technology - but this wasn't enough to attract any newcomers, with just three on the list by March of this year.

Over the following months, each pulled out - in April, July and then finally last Thursday, 27 October.

Pictured: The Jersey Aircraft Registry lost its final aircraft last week, according to the official listing.

The last to go was the first to have joined the registry back in 2015: a Cessna CJ4-525C registered to Tower House Consultants Limited, at Millbrook Place in St. Lawrence.

Announcing the closure of the registry today, Deputy Morel noted that an Aviation Strategy was under development.

As part of this work, he said his team would be investigating "how Jersey can benefit from registry-related activity in the future."

"They will identify the reasons for the JAR’s underperformance and any decisions on future registry-related activity will be mindful of those reasons, to ensure that we learn from our experiences of operating the JAR to date," Deputy Morel continued.