Gibraltar, a British overseas territory located at the southern tip of Spain, announced it will set up an independent aircraft registry. It plans to register private aircraft initially to establish experience before transitioning to cover commercial airplanes.

Business plans are being invited from interested parties with 10 years' proven aircraft-registration experience, including origination of a register from scratch. Gibraltar wants to establish an exclusive long-term partnership to develop and manage the registry, which would be a subpart of the UK register, subject to scrutiny by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority in accordance with the Chicago Convention.

It wants to "elevate the international profile of Gibraltar as a premier jurisdiction in the aviation community, by creating a service-oriented aircraft registry." Submissions, required by mid-July, should include details of financial resources, concept of register operations, business plan, and available investment.

Gibraltar also seeks details of "aspirations as to the eventual size of the registry [and] timescales involved." These factors will test the proposal, which follows similar initiatives from other small European territories, including the self-governing UK-crown island dependencies of the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Jersey, as well as the Republic of San Marino and Malta.