Choice Aviation Explains What a Part 145 Repair Station Certificate Requires and How It Differs from an Independent Mechanic

Choice Aviation, which holds Part 145 certificate numbers VPED116U and VPER116U and operates shops in Cody, Wyoming, and Hamilton, Montana, published a guide on what a Part 145 repair station certificate means and what owners should ask any shop. A Part 145 repair station is a maintenance organization holding its own FAA certificate under 14 CFR Part 145, authorizing maintenance, preventive maintenance and alterations on aircraft and aircraft parts.

Under 14 CFR 145.5, no one may operate as a certificated repair station without a repair station certificate, ratings and operations specifications issued under Part 145, and those documents must be available on the premises for the public and the FAA to inspect. The certificate is issued to the organization rather than an individual. For a U.S. shop it remains in effect until surrendered, suspended or revoked, with no annual renewal.

To be certificated, a shop must submit a repair station manual and a quality control manual acceptable to the FAA, a list of the articles it wants to work on, an organizational chart, a description of its housing and facilities with the physical address, a list of any maintenance functions to be contracted out, and a training program for FAA approval. Equipment, people, technical data and facilities must be in place at the time of FAA inspection. Ratings define the limits of the shop's work and cover airframes, powerplants, propellers, radios, instruments and accessories.

After certification, the shop must operate a quality control system acceptable to the FAA. Under 14 CFR 145.211, its manual must describe how the shop inspects incoming parts and raw materials, performs a preliminary inspection of every article received, checks accident-involved articles for hidden damage, qualifies and oversees outside contractors, performs final inspection and return to service, calibrates measuring and test equipment, and takes corrective action. The shop must designate an accountable manager as primary FAA contact.

Before an aircraft is returned to service, an inspector must find the work airworthy, and only an employee certificated under Part 65 can sign final inspections and maintenance releases. Work must follow approved data or data acceptable to the FAA, and major repairs and major alterations must follow approved technical data under 14 CFR 145.201. Under 14 CFR 145.219, records are kept in English showing the work met Part 43, a copy of the maintenance release goes to the owner, and records are retained for at least two years from return to service and made available to the FAA and the NTSB.

An independent A&P mechanic holds an individual Part 65 certificate and can maintain aircraft and approve work for return to service within those privileges. Annual inspections and approval after major repairs or alterations require an inspection authorization (IA).

The guide contrasts this with a Part 145 station, where the certificate belongs to the organization and the FAA oversees the whole shop, its manuals and its people. That oversight comes with written procedures, a documented training program, required calibrated tools and records retention. The guide says an independent mechanic is often sufficient for routine work.

The two models allocate responsibility differently. An individual certificate puts the credential on a person and the work within that person's privileges. An organizational certificate puts it on a system: manuals, inspection steps, calibration, contractor oversight and record retention that the FAA inspects as a whole and that persist when individual staff change. For owners, that difference is a question of what exactly is being relied on when a logbook entry is signed.

Because ratings define the limits of a shop's work, the certificate is only meaningful alongside the specific ratings and operations specifications, which the shop must have available for inspection. Checking those documents against the aircraft and the job, rather than the certificate number alone, is how the scope of authorization becomes verifiable.

The guide's own framing, that an independent mechanic is often enough for routine work, suggests the choice tracks the complexity and type of the maintenance event. Where a job calls for approved technical data, a major repair or alteration, or outside contractors, the organizational controls described in 14 CFR 145.201 and 145.211 are the relevant yardstick.