How to present CAA, EASA and FAA approvals on an MRO website

We are not regulatory advisers and nothing here is regulatory advice. What follows is about presentation: where the reference goes, how to word it, and what to do with the certificate. Everything you publish about your own approvals is yours to check against your own approval schedule, and any MRO website we build has that wording signed off by the client before it goes live.

With that said, presentation is where nearly all the value is lost, and it is entirely within your control.

Put the reference where the doubt is

A visitor's doubt peaks in the first fifteen seconds. That is where the approval reference has to be: in the first screen, as text, next to what you do.

In the nine UK maintenance and avionics sites we reviewed, the approvals were on the site in every case where the organisation held them. The problem was placement. One audit note from that exercise reads: the approvals are on the site, but only further down the homepage, not where a phone visitor sees them first. That is the pattern. The fact is present, at the moment it is no longer needed.

Treat the reference the way you would treat a price on a menu. Not hidden out of modesty, not saved for a conversation. Stated, plainly, at the point of decision.

What that looks like in practice

A small block near the top of the homepage, and repeated on the relevant service page, containing:

• The approval type, in the regulator's words
• The reference number itself
• The ratings or scope, if they are short enough to list
• Any weight or class limit that applies
• A link to the certificate

Five lines. It takes a reader four seconds and it settles the biggest question they have.

Use the regulator's wording, not your own shorthand

Internally, everybody says “we're 145 approved”. On a website, write it out: the approval type and the reference exactly as the certificate words it. Two reasons.

The first is that a buyer, an auditor or an insurer may want to check it, and a reference that matches the certificate is checkable. The second is that people search for the formal phrasing. Somebody looking for a repair station types the formal words, not your shorthand, and a page that uses them is the page that answers.

Where jurisdictions differ, say which one you mean

If you hold approvals under more than one authority, label each one. If you hold one and work with operators from elsewhere, say what that means for them rather than leaving them to work it out. An American owner reading a British site is trying to map your approval onto something they recognise, and a single explanatory sentence does that work for them.

The wording that stopped being correct in 2021

This one is specific to the UK, and it is still live on real websites today.

The United Kingdom left the EASA system on 1 January 2021. UK organisations hold UK approvals issued by the UK CAA. One site in our sample advertises an EASA Part M approval on fourteen separate pages. The organisation is, as far as we can tell, entirely legitimate and properly approved. The website simply never got updated.

Consider how that reads to the two people most likely to notice. A well-informed operator sees a claim that no longer applies and wonders what else is out of date. A less-informed operator sees nothing wrong, and then finds the paperwork does not say what the website said. Neither is a good outcome, and both come from a five-minute edit nobody scheduled.

If your site was written before 2021, this is the first thing to check. Search your own site for “EASA” and read every result.

The certificate PDF

Publishing the certificate is good practice and surprisingly rare. It converts an assertion into evidence at no cost. Three rules.

Never make the PDF the only copy. Search engines handle PDFs poorly, phones render them worse, and a visitor on a train is not going to download a document to find out whether you can take their aeroplane. The reference goes on the page as text. The PDF is corroboration underneath it.

Label the link honestly. “See the certificate (PDF)” tells the reader exactly what will happen. “Click here” does not, and a PDF that opens unannounced on a phone is a small betrayal.

Host it yourself and diarise it. Approvals get renewed. A certificate PDF with an expiry date in the past is worse than no PDF, because it invites exactly the doubt it was meant to remove. Put the renewal in the same calendar as the approval renewal itself.

Ratings are capability, not decoration

A list of rating codes means something precise to somebody in the industry and nothing to anybody else. Both audiences visit your site.

The answer is to publish both layers: the codes, because the informed reader wants them and searches for them, and a plain sentence next to them describing what they let you do. “Aircraft up to 5,700 kg” is a plain sentence. It costs you nothing and it means an owner can qualify themselves in or out without ringing.

Keep the logos off

Regulator logos and manufacturer marks are governed by their own usage rules, and using one incorrectly turns a trust signal into a liability. The reference number is the evidence. It carries more weight with a knowledgeable reader than a logo does anyway, because anyone can paste a logo onto a page and a reference can be checked.

Manufacturer authorisations are worth naming in text, prominently, if you hold them: being an authorised dealer for the avionics brands an owner already wants is a strong reason to choose you. Name them as words, and follow whatever the agreement says about marks.

A worked example

Here is the block we would put in the first screen of a UK maintenance organisation's homepage. It is four facts and two links, and it settles most of the reader's uncertainty before they have scrolled.

• Part 145 approval: reference, as printed on the certificate. Link: see the certificate (PDF)
• Part CAO approval: reference. Link: see the certificate (PDF)
• Ratings held: the codes, listed
• Aircraft weight: the limit, in plain words

Then, immediately underneath, the aircraft types and the capability list, so that somebody who has just satisfied themselves you are approved can find out in the next four seconds whether you do their particular job.

Related: what an aircraft maintenance website should contain and the MRO website conversion checklist.