FAA Ends Brief Pipistrel Import Ban

Stephen Pope

Thursday, August 23, 2012 at 08:12 PM ET

Verified

Pipistrel Alpha Trainer

Key Takeaways:

Pipistrel Aircraft faced a week-long U.S. import ban on its LSA models because the FAA couldn't verify their manufacturing location.
The confusion stemmed from the FAA's difficulty locating Pipistrel's Italian factory, built specifically for U.S. bilateral agreement compliance, on Google Earth.
After communication and further searching confirmed the factory's location, the FAA quickly lifted the import ban.

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Pipistrel Aircraft is again being allowed to import its LSA models into the U.S. after the FAA imposed a week-long ban on the grounds that the agency couldn’t verify where the airplanes were actually being built.

Pipistrel is based in Slovenia a few miles from the Italian border. Because Slovenia doesn’t have a bilateral certification agreement with the FAA, Pipistrel built a factory in Italy, which does have a bilateral agreement with the U.S.