Ultimate Vanity Plate: Bermuda Jet Tail Number
Owning a private jet has long been considered one of the ultimate status symbols — but now having a Bermuda vanity tail number for one of these aircraft is becoming chic among the rich and famous.
The on-line Haute Living.com magazine reports that like a license plate on an automobile, an aircraft registration number, commonly known as a “tail number” is a unique series of letters and numbers which are required to be clearly marked on the aircraft.
“Each country is assigned its own specific country code typically starting with a letter,” says Daniel Novela, a corporate lawyer who assists clients worldwide in the purchase and registry of their aircraft, yachts, real estate and businesses. “For instance, the tail number for all aircraft registered in the US begin with the letter ‘N’, followed by a series of up to five alpha-numeric characters. For the United Kingdom, the tail number starts with a ‘G’, and so on.
“Many of the world’s elite, however, do not register their aircraft in the United States or the United Kingdom for the same reason that they use offshore corporations and offshore bank accounts — namely anonymity, the wish to remain unknown to the general public. For that reason, some of the most popular offshore jurisdictions to register your aircraft are also tax haven jurisdictions, with a long history of providing the utmost in client privacy and confidentiality.
“Here are the tail number country codes for some of the most popular [offshore] jurisdictions: Aruba [P4], Bermuda [VP or VQ], Cayman Islands [VP], Isle of Man [M] and San Marino [T7]. Most of these jurisdictions allow you to pick the sequence of numbers or letters that follow the county code. This has led to private jet owners now routinely demanding to have a ‘vanity’ tail number along with the private jet of their choosing.”
Pink Floyd have all their fleet of restored WW2 aircraft and early jets registered with VP for a number of years.
Not just for the rich and famous, Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline have the majority of the wide body fleet registered from Bermuda
The VP is a British colony prefix, hence Cayman having the same prefix. It is also used for ham radio call signs VP being a British colony followed by 9 for Bermuda then the 2 letter suffix identifying the individual holding the license.