FAA Part 135 Recordkeeping Requirements: What to Store and For How Long
A practical retention and retrieval guide for crew, aircraft, and operational evidence.
Navlyt Editorial Team•Navlyt•Published 3/24/2026•Updated 3/24/2026•8 min read
Record categories every operator should control
Core categories include pilot training and currency, medical records, aircraft maintenance evidence, manual revisions, and program-level compliance logs.
Use our complete Part 135 checklist to validate that each category has an owner and retrieval method.
Retention strategy for real-world operations
A reliable strategy defines where evidence lives, how versions are controlled, and which records require immutable history or acknowledgment traceability.
Implement role-based access and version controls in Navlyt Compliance to minimize file drift.
Tip
Use consistent naming standards: date, pilot or tail, event type, and signer.
Retrieval performance as a compliance metric
Measure time-to-evidence for your highest-frequency requests. If retrieval takes too long, your control may exist but still fail under inspection stress.
Monthly retrieval drills reveal weak indexing and missing owner accountability.
Compliance warning
Unstructured storage increases both inspection risk and operational delays.
How to deploy in phases
Start with high-risk records first: training, medical, and manual amendments. Then expand to full operations and CAPA history coverage.
To deploy quickly, start from Navlyt onboarding and pricing and run a two-week evidence cleanup sprint.
Navlyt tracks this automatically
Turn recurring compliance work into automated tasks and evidence trails.
Start Free TrialKey takeaways
- Standardize record categories and ownership.
- Design retention with version history and access controls.
- Track retrieval speed as an operational KPI.
- Implement in risk-priority phases for faster adoption.
Author
Navlyt Editorial Team
Navlyt
Written by the Navlyt team. Guides reference the specific regulations they discuss and are general information, not legal or regulatory advice — confirm requirements for your operation with your FSDO or compliance officer.
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