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Aviation glossary

Re-registration

Also: registration change, new registration, reregistration

Registration and rules

Change of an aircraft's registration, common when it moves to another country or operator; its serial number, by contrast, never changes.

What it is

An airliner may carry several registrations over its life. The most common case is a change of country: when an aircraft is sold or leased to a foreign airline, it is removed from one register and entered on another under a different prefix. Re-registration can also happen within a country, for instance when an airline wants personalised registrations across its fleet.

Between operators, an aircraft may spend time on a temporary registration, sometimes on a register chosen by its lessor. Because registrations change and are reused, tracing an aircraft's history depends on its serial number and type, with each registration linked to the period in which it was valid.

On Vuelopedia

An aircraft record brings together every registration the aircraft has carried, and it can be found by searching for any of them.

Related terms

RegistrationCombination of letters and numbers that identifies an aircraft with the state in which it is registered and must be painted on its exterior. DeregistrationCancellation of an aircraft's entry on a state's register, for example because it is exported to another country, withdrawn from use or scrapped. MSNSerial number assigned by the manufacturer to each aircraft which, unlike the registration, stays with it unchanged for its entire life. 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.
Whole glossary

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Re-registration. Retrieved October 19, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration

MLA

“Re-registration.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Re-registration.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Re-registration. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration (Accessed: 19 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_re_registration,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Re-registration}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-19},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-19}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/re-registration |title=Re-registration |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-19 |language=en}}

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