FAA Ends Brief Pipistrel Import Ban

Stephen Pope

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

Verified

Pipistrel Alpha Trainer

Key Takeaways:

The FAA temporarily banned Pipistrel Aircraft's LSA imports into the U.S. due to difficulty verifying their manufacturing location.
Pipistrel operates a factory in Italy specifically to comply with U.S. import regulations, as its home country Slovenia lacks a bilateral agreement.
The ban was lifted after the factory's location was confirmed, resolving confusion partly attributed to FAA staff's initial difficulty locating it via Google Earth.

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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.