Aircraft annual inspection in Florida.

An annual inspection is the once-a-year check that keeps most piston airplanes legal to fly. An aircraft annual inspection Florida pilots schedule is due every 12 calendar months under FAA rules, the same here as anywhere else in the country. The regulation is 14 CFR 91.409. "Calendar month" is generous on purpose: an inspection signed in June is good through the last day of June the following year, not the exact date.

An annual is a full inspection of the whole airplane against the manufacturer's checklist. It covers the airframe, the engine, and every system in between. The person who signs it holds an FAA A&P mechanic certificate plus Inspection Authorization (IA), and the signature is a legal statement that the aircraft is airworthy on the day it goes in the logbook.

Who has to have one?

Almost every standard-category airplane in private use. If you own a Cessna, Piper, Mooney, Cirrus, or Beech and fly it for yourself, the FAA expects a valid annual in the records before you launch. Keeping that annual current is the whole job. Owner groups like AOPA publish good background on the rule, and a real shop should be able to walk you through it in plain language. If your annual has lapsed, we can still inspect the airplane and get it back to airworthy.

A large share of the annuals we sign are piston singles and light twins: Lycoming and Continental flat-four and flat-six engines, the O-320, O-360, and IO-540 and their close cousins, hung on Cessnas, Pipers, Mooneys, Cirrus, and Beech airframes. These airplanes come through every week, and we take on turboprop and Robinson helicopter inspections too.

If you fly for hire or teach in it, the annual pairs with a 100-hour inspection, covered further down. If you are buying rather than keeping, a pre-buy inspection runs as deep as an annual before you wire the money. And if you want the full menu, our aircraft maintenance services page lays out inspections, mobile work, AOG, and helicopter service side by side.

We're based across our hangars in the Southeast, at DeLand, Venice, and Sanford, and we cover Florida and Georgia. Sarasota and Fort Myers owners are a short hop out, and mobile units reach the fields in between.

If your airplane carries people or property for hire, or gives flight instruction for hire, FAA Part 91.409(b) requires a 100-hour inspection on top of the annual. The checklist is essentially the same as an annual. The two real differences are timing and signature.

An annual is due every 12 calendar months and can only be signed by an A&P holding Inspection Authorization. A 100-hour is due every 100 hours of that for-hire flying and can be signed by any A&P. An annual also counts as a 100-hour, so a flight school airplane getting its annual resets the 100-hour clock at the same time. For a busy training fleet, that's one less date to chase. We keep instructional and commercial aircraft on a schedule so an inspection never falls off the calendar, and the full breakdown lives on our maintenance services page.