Records retention policy
Aero Logworks · policy dated 2026-09-18
| Record | Kept | Minimum required | Regulation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maintenance entry (43.9) A maintenance, preventive maintenance or alteration record under 43.9 must be kept for one year after the work was performed, or until the work is repeated or superseded. We keep it for the life of the aircraft. | life of aircraft | until superseded | 14 CFR 91.417(b)(1) |
| Inspection (43.11) An inspection record under 43.11 must be kept until the work is repeated or superseded by the next inspection of that kind. We keep every one of them, including the superseded ones, for the life of the aircraft. | life of aircraft | until superseded | 14 CFR 91.417(b)(1) |
| Major repair or alteration (Form 337) A major repair or alteration (FAA Form 337) is a permanent record and transfers with the aircraft when it is sold. We keep it for the life of the aircraft and it is in every export. | life of aircraft | permanent | 14 CFR 91.417(b)(2), 91.419 |
| General record A record with no specific period of its own is kept as part of the aircraft's maintenance history, for the life of the aircraft. | life of aircraft | until superseded | 14 CFR 91.417(a) |
What we keep, and for how long
Every maintenance record in this service is kept for **the life of the aircraft**.
Nothing that has been signed is ever deleted. There is no disposal job, no expiry sweep and no retention period that causes anything to be removed — not for maintenance entries, not for inspection records, not for major repairs and alterations, and not for the signatures applied to any of them. A record that is corrected is not replaced: the correction is a new version linked to the one before it, and both are kept.
This is a deliberate choice to keep more than the regulations require. The periods in the next section are the **minimum** the FAA would accept. We satisfy all of them by keeping everything.
The minimum each regulation requires
The table on this page shows, for each class of record, what 14 CFR would accept as a floor beside what we actually keep.
- **Maintenance, preventive maintenance and alteration records (43.9)** — required for one year after the work was performed, or until the work is repeated or superseded, whichever comes first (91.417(b)(1)). - **Inspection records (43.11)** — required until the work is repeated or superseded by another inspection of that kind (91.417(b)(1)). We keep the superseded ones too, so the inspection history is continuous rather than a single current entry. - **Major repairs and alterations (FAA Form 337)** — permanent records that transfer with the aircraft when it is sold (91.417(b)(2), 91.419). They are in every export. - **General records** — no period of their own; kept as part of the aircraft's maintenance history.
Because everything is kept for the life of the aircraft, every one of those minimums is met by construction rather than by a calculation that could be wrong.
Records are available to you, and to the FAA
Any record in this service can be exported at any time, by the aircraft's owner, without help from us. An export is produced in three forms — a machine-readable JSON copy containing every version and every content hash, a CSV for a spreadsheet, and a PDF that reproduces each signed entry as it was signed, with the signer's name, certificate kind and number, and the time.
This satisfies the expectation in AC 120-78B ¶3.2.8.6 and ¶2.2.9 that records be available to the FAA or NTSB on request, and ¶5.1.2.2's requirement that a system a customer leaves can produce them.
If you close your account
Closing your account does not delete your records.
When you close an account, this service first builds a complete export of every aircraft you own personally — all three formats, for every aircraft, including any you have archived — and stores them before anything else happens. You are emailed one download link per file, and the same links are shown on the confirmation page. **Those links do not require you to sign in**, because a closed account cannot. They are single-document links and they expire after 90 days; the records behind them are kept for the life of the aircraft regardless, and support can issue new links.
If the export cannot be produced, the closure is abandoned and your account is left exactly as it was. An owner who cannot get their copy does not get closed.
After the export is stored, your account is marked closed: your access to other people's aircraft is revoked, your memberships of any organizations end, and you can no longer sign in or sign records. Aircraft you owned stay in the system with their complete records, still owned by your closed account, so nothing is orphaned and nothing is lost.
**Signatures you have already applied are untouched.** They remain valid, they still verify against the content they were applied to, and they still display your name as it stood when you signed. Leaving does not unsign your work.
What closing an account does not do
Closing an account is not an erasure request. We do not offer deletion of maintenance records, and we would not be able to honour one for a record an aircraft's airworthiness depends on: the records belong to the aircraft's history as much as to the person who entered them, and 91.417 requires the owner or operator to keep them. If you need something other than closure and export, contact us and say what you need — it is a conversation, not a setting.
An organization's own records and aircraft are not affected by an individual member closing their account. They belong to the organization.