Bizav Operators Must Shift to Proactive Compliance

Business aviation operators face an increasingly complex global regulatory landscape, yet most approach compliance reactively—accumulating what Adam Hartley calls a “souvenir collection” of permits for destinations already visited rather than building systematic frameworks for worldwide operations.

Hartley, founder of Hartley Business Aviation Consulting and former global regulatory services leader at Universal Weather and Aviation, presented a methodology for proactive regulatory planning on Tuesday, November 11, during Bombardier’s Safety Standdown conference. His framework addresses a fundamental problem: regulatory friction pulls key personnel away from safety-critical responsibilities while limiting the operational flexibility that justifies business aviation’s value proposition.

The Reactive Cycle

The current reactive approach creates operational gaps when passengers want to pivot globally. Hartley said. “There’s no shortage of information, but you need to know how to filter it to stuff that matters for you.

“Somebody who has serious responsibilities for safety, maybe they’re flying to an airport they’ve never been to before, and they should be focused on that. And instead, they’re getting down in the weeds, they’re contacting vendors, they’re trying to figure something out,” Hartley explained.

The knowledge retention problem compounds these challenges. Hartley cited a recent example where a Fortune 500 operator lost a lead dispatcher with 20 years of experience who had mastered the company’s regulatory portfolio. The replacement plan involved training a new pilot between flight duties. “When can we talk? ‘Well, she’s flying this week, then she’s off the next week, and then she’s in the sim the following week. So maybe a month from now we can have an introduction,’” Hartley recounted. “I said, ‘This is not a solution at all.’”

Four-phase Framework

Hartley’s systematic approach comprises four phases designed to create organizational resilience:

Monitor and awareness: Operators must profile their realistic operational scope, considering alternatives and regional reach rather than only confirmed destinations. “Monitor where you could operate, not the places that you have operated or the places that you’ve been told you’re going to operate,” Hartley said. This requires designating ownership for tracking regulatory changes and filtering information from trade associations, regional handlers, and government resources.

Identification and investigation: This phase involves prioritizing requirements, determining applicability for charter versus private operations, and identifying whether the operator, traveler, or both bear compliance burdens. “Understanding who’s bearing the burden, what’s the potential outcome—is the legal entity going to be involved?” Hartley said, noting that programs like EU-LISA require corporate documentation, including certificates of incorporation and articles of association.

Implementation and resources: Operators must assign clear responsibilities and integrate technical solutions while avoiding what Hartley termed “hot potato” delegation, where regulatory tasks bounce between personnel based on availability rather than expertise. “If you don’t decide ahead of time what the resources are going to be, you’re going to end up giving different things to different people,” he noted. “Now you have varied levels of engagement, varied levels of knowledge. There may be a mismatch with the resource and the responsibility.”

Documentation and backup: Creating standard operating procedures and updating operations manuals ensures knowledge transfer. “If that person who learns about it and becomes an expert never writes it down, never puts it in the system, never develops an SOP, never says, ‘Here’s the follow-up plan,’ if they get their next big opportunity...they’ve moved next door, and you’re back at square one,” Hartley said.

Critical Regulatory Developments

Hartley highlighted several urgent compliance challenges requiring immediate attention:

Global APIS/PNR expansion: More than 50 countries now require advance passenger information or passenger name record filings for non-scheduled business aviation. EU-LISA launches voluntary filing in January 2026, with mandatory compliance by April. The system provides interactive pre-validation and can issue do-not-board messages. “EU-LISA will give you back a go or no-go based on if they have a one-time or short-term stay visa,” Hartley explained.

The UK’s General Aviation Report (GAR) system requires multiple filings at 24 hours, 13 hours, two hours, and departure. Hong Kong and Mexico now demand closure messages post-departure. Germany is actively pursuing non-compliant charter operators. “Germany’s being much more aggressive about pulling non-scheduled commercial operators into their system. People who have operated over there and not filed a German PNR, they’re sending out love letters with some pretty hefty potential fines on them,” Hartley said.

Traveler documentation: Electronic Travel Authorization programs are proliferating globally, with pre-departure clearance becoming standard. “We’re just seeing a shift to this, not just pre-departure filing, but pre-departure clearance of travelers,” Hartley noted. “The whole process of showing up to an arrival location, presenting yourself to customs, and then having them make a determination on whether or not you have the appropriate travel documents is going away.”

Emissions tracking evolution: The EU Emissions Trading System is expanding to non-CO2 tracking, including contrails and technical performance factors. “To track non-CO2, it has a lot to do with other technical factors, with the performance of the airplane, the different [aspects]—the weather that’s involved, the performance cycles on the airplane,” Hartley explained. “It’s really highly technical stuff.” The UK operates a separate ETS post-Brexit, while ICAO’s CORSIA program looms on the horizon.

Customs modernization: U.S. Customs and Border Protection is consolidating requirements, now tying border overflight exemptions to user fee compliance verification. Hartley noted significant gaps in charter operator awareness: “There’s a huge gap in people who are not paying their user fees on the charter front. And it’s not usually negligence or bad actors. They just weren’t aware.”

Proactive Measures

Hartley recommended several enabling actions operators should take regardless of current destinations:

Register for programs even with uncertain applicability. EU-LISA registration takes two to three weeks. “Our advice has been to register [and] get your number,” Hartley said. “If you don’t do that, I think that puts you in a bad spot.”

Obtain key authorizations proactively: Visa Waiver Program signatures enable ESTA travelers, border overflight exemptions provide Mexico access, and Reimbursable Services Program enrollment enables after-hours customs clearance. “Even if you say, ‘I don't know if I’m ever going to use that program,’ it takes 30 to 60 days to get it. It costs nothing to apply,” Hartley noted.

Utilize CBP’s general aviation-specific airport fact sheets. “This is information that was behind lock and key,” Hartley said. “CBP has brought that out from behind the wall and has made it available.”

Consider lead times for stacked requirements. Security programs can require 30 days before charter permits are issued. “Security programs can take 30 days. There’s no quick pivot that can happen there,” Hartley cautioned.

Data-driven Enforcement

Regulatory enforcement is becoming more sophisticated through data sharing. “As more data becomes available, as regulators make more connections to each other, these opportunities and spaces to avoid enforcement are becoming less and less,” Hartley said. “The prevalence of ADS-B data out in the marketplace, knowing that nothing’s private at the end of the day, really makes it hard to avoid enforcement.”

“You’ve got to lean into compliance as an attitude,” Hartley said, rather than waiting for enforcement to drive action.

Standardizing the Non-Standard

Hartley applied lessons from CBP’s modernization efforts to demonstrate how systematic approaches can tame complex regulatory environments. The agency’s Coffee with Customs program and standardized fact sheets for 400 ports provide models for operator frameworks.

“If you want the general answer from the government and one consistent answer, it’s going to come down to the mean,” Hartley explained, noting that true consistency would mean 8-to-5 Monday-through-Friday operations. “The flexibility that we actually get from them in these different airport setups...really are dictated by the needs of that specific airport.”

The solution lies in standardizing operator approaches rather than expecting regulatory uniformity. “When you take a non-standard environment, what can you standardize? You can standardize the way that you look at it. You can standardize the questions that you ask. You can standardize the process,” Hartley said.

Hartley’s closing message emphasized that business aviation operators must prepare beyond probable scenarios to possible ones. The off-schedule requests and corner-case situations—not the routine operations—pose the greatest risk to unprepared flight departments.