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Aviation glossary

Operator and owner

Also: aircraft operator, registered owner, owner trustee

Airlines and business

Distinction between the operator, the airline that flies an aircraft and is responsible for its operation, and the legal owner, often a lessor or a bank.

What it is

The operator holds operational control: it places the aircraft on its air operator certificate, provides the crew, is responsible for keeping it airworthy and schedules its flights. The owner is the legal titleholder, which may be the airline itself, a lessor, a bank or a company set up specifically to finance that aircraft.

Some aircraft registers record the two separately. In the United States, for example, many airliners appear on the FAA register in the name of a bank acting as owner trustee for the real owner, rather than in the name of the airline that flies them. An aircraft can change operator several times without changing owner, or the other way round.

On Vuelopedia

In an aircraft record, Vuelopedia shows the current operator, the chain of operators with dates and, where known, the owner or lessor.

Related terms

LessorCompany that owns aircraft and rents them out to airlines for years at a time in return for regular payments, without operating them itself. Aircraft registerOfficial record kept by each state of the aircraft entered on it, listing their registration, type, serial number and owner. Dry leaseLease of an aircraft alone, without crew or maintenance; the lessee airline flies it with its own staff and under its own operating certificate. Sale and leasebackDeal in which an airline sells an aircraft to a lessor and immediately leases it back, so that it can keep flying the aircraft without interruption. RegistrationCombination of letters and numbers that identifies an aircraft with the state in which it is registered and must be painted on its exterior.
Whole glossary

Cite

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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Operator and owner. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner

MLA

“Operator and owner.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Operator and owner.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Operator and owner. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_operator_and_owner,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Operator and owner}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/operator-and-owner |title=Operator and owner |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}

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