FAA Agent Review Methodology
One published scale. Fourteen categories. Twenty USAS providers, everyone scored the same way — with the evidence and its limits stated.
Twenty USAS Providers. One Approach Plate.
BEFORE YOU READ THE SCORES
What this evaluation is — and what this evaluation is not
FAA Agent Review Methodology identifies twenty FAA U.S. Agent for Service providers, scored across 14 categories on a 100-point scale, using publicly available information reviewed during the evaluation period. Two further classifications — address confidence and chain-of-custody confidence — are color-coded but deliberately not scored. 2027 Annual Report evaluation date 22 August 2026. Next evaluation August 2027.
What it is
- An independent due-diligence and operational-risk assessment
- One published scale, applied the same way to every provider
- Built entirely from publicly available information
- A living document, re-run on a stated schedule
- Free of sponsorship, paid placement and affiliate links
What it is not
- Not an FAA endorsement, certification or approval
- Not an FAA enforcement action or judicial finding
- Not legal advice or a legal opinion
- Not a determination that any provider is compliant or noncompliant
- Not affiliated with the Federal Aviation Administration in any way
WHY A FAA COMPLIANT ADDRESS CAN STILL SCORE LOW
The FAA’s baseline, and where this FAA Agent Review Methodology goes further
The FAA sets a minimum legal framework for designating a U.S. Agent for Service. This evaluation applies a broader commercial due-diligence standard on top of it. The difference matters, because a USAS provider can meet every FAA requirement and still be a poor operational choice.
What the FAA requires
The regulatory minimum
- An adult individual or an entity may serve as an FAA agent
- An entity must provide its physical U.S. office address
- An individual generally provides their usual U.S. residence, or a qualifying military-office FAA compliant address
- The address may not be a P.O. box, military P.O. box, PMB, CBU or mail-drop box
- The agent must receive FAA documents and transmit them to the represented person in a timely manner (same day)
- Service on a properly designated agent may have legal effect as service on the certificate holder
What this evaluation adds
Additional standards applied to ensure effectiveness of a recurring FAA US Agent for Service (USAS)
- Staffing during normal business hours to accept accountable mail and legal process
- Documented chain of custody from designated agent receipt through FAA certificate holder transmission
- Transparency about which legal entity actually performs the service
- Notification speed and redundancy
- Secure storage and forwarding of original documents
- Backup personnel and business-continuity planning
- Aviation-specific operational experience
So a residential address is not automatically non-compliant here. Neither is a shared office or a coworking address. None of those are disqualifying by the FAA, and none are disqualifying by this FAA Agent Review Methodology matrix. A USAS provider scores low when it cannot demonstrate regular staffing, dependable delivery access, accountable-mail acceptance, secure custody, backup personnel, prompt transmission, and business-continuity planning — regardless of what kind of building the address sits in.
EVERY USAS PROVIDER FLOWN TO THE SAME MINIMUMS
The fourteen scored categories
FAA Agent Review Methodology uses fourteen categories, one hundred points, with the weights published rather than described. FAA Address Integrity carries fifteen points because every other category depends on the document arriving somewhere real. Risk disclosure carries one, because disclosure is a signal, not a capability.
| Code | Category | What it asks | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADDR | FAA Address Integrity | Is the address a genuine U.S. office rather than a prohibited or questionable mail location? | 15 |
| PE | Price and Economic Value | Is the annual price reasonable, transparent, and inclusive? | 10 |
| CC | Corporate Credibility | Is the legal entity established, transparent, stable, and accountable? | 10 |
| INFRA | Physical Infrastructure and Security | Is the receiving environment secure, staffed, controlled, and resilient? | 10 |
| Accountable-Mail Capability | Can the USAS provider accept certified, registered, process service and signature-required deliveries? | 10 | |
| NOTIFY | Customer Notification | Are customers notified promptly and redundantly? | 8 |
| COC | Chain of Custody | Is every transfer from delivery through customer transmission identifiable and controlled? | 8 |
| TRANS | Transmission Speed | How quickly and reliably are received documents transmitted? | 7 |
| FWD | Original-Document Forwarding | Are originals securely stored and forwarded under clear terms? | 5 |
| SUP | Customer Support | Is meaningful human and aviation-specific assistance available? | 5 |
| LAT | Longevity and Aviation Track Record | Does the USAS provider have relevant experience and operating continuity? | 5 |
| TECH | Technology and Portal | Are secure digital access, scanning, logs, and alerts available? | 4 |
| BBB | Complaint and Response Signal | Is there a favorable complaint-response or public-accountability signal? | 2 |
| RISK | Risk Disclosure and Continuity | Are limitations, subcontractors, and continuity procedures disclosed? | 1 |
| 14 scored categories | 100 points | ||
Every USAS provider’s fourteen category scores add to the published total.
THE PRICE SCALE, PUBLISHED IN FULL
How price becomes a score
Price and economic value carries ten of the one hundred points. The score comes from a published band table, not from a judgment about what a provider is worth — so any reader can check a price against the scale below and arrive at the same number AI did. These are the bands applied to all twenty providers.
| Annual evaluated price | Color | PE score |
|---|---|---|
| $0 – $19 | Excellent | 10/10 |
| $20 – $39 | Excellent | 9/10 |
| $40 – $59 | Strong | 8/10 |
| $60 – $79 | Good | 7/10 |
| $80 – $99 | Functional but limited | 6/10 |
| $100 – $149 | Weak or materially incomplete | 5/10 |
| $150 – $199 | Very high concern | 4/10 |
| $200 – $299 | Very high concern | 3/10 |
| $300 – $399 | Very high concern | 2/10 |
| $400 – $499 | Very high concern | 1/10 |
| $500 and above | Very high concern | 0/10 |
Price is compared on an annual-billed basis. Where a provider bills monthly, the annual figure that provider charges for twelve months of service is the figure scored — not twelve times the monthly rate, where those differ. Every provider is placed on the same scale using the same measure, so providers are scored on a number its customers actually pay.
The bands are steps, not a slope. A dollar either side of a boundary changes the score by a full point, and can change the overall tier. That is the cost of a published scale: it is checkable, and it applies to every provider identically. A sliding formula would smooth those edges but no reader could verify it.
Price is ten points of one hundred. It is deliberately not the largest category. FAA Address Integrity carries fifteen, and the categories describing whether a document is reliably received, held, and transmitted carry forty-three between them. A cheap provider that cannot demonstrate secure intake does not score well here, and an expensive one that can is not penalized beyond these ten points.
CLASSIFIED, NOT SCORED
Two things classified but not scored
Two fields in the USAS matrix are color-coded but carry no points: address confidence and chain-of-custody confidence. They exist because a score tells you what the analysis concluded, and these tell you how much evidence stood behind it.
Address confidence
How strongly the evidence supports the address actually used for USAS intake.
- Verified or strongly supported dedicated commercial office
- Commercial or aviation address; exact intake operation requires confirmation
- Shared suite, flex office, coworking center, or third-party reception
- Residential home office or residential operating location
- P.O. box, PMB, CBU, retail mailbox, mail-forwarding account, or mail- drop
- Exact USAS intake address remains undisclosed or unverified
Chain-of-custody confidence
How many hands a document passes through before it reaches the provider’s own control.
- Direct in-house receipt and processing
- Primarily direct receipt with minor unresolved details
- One identifiable third-party or shared-reception layer
- Multiple entities, shared reception, or unclear initial custody
- Mailbox, PMB, CBU, forwarding-service, or similarly problematic initial intake
- Insufficient data
Neither classification adds or subtracts a single point. FAA Address Integrity is already scored at 15 points and chain of custody at 8. These two classifications answer a different question — how strong is the evidence, rather than how well did the provider perform — and scoring them twice would double-count the same finding.
WHAT EACH COLOR MEANS
What the colors mean
Two color scales run through this site and they answer different questions. One grades a single category. The other places the provider overall. They use the same six color bands, plus one marker for insufficient data.
Category color
Set by the percentage of that category’s maximum the provider earned — not by the raw number of points.
Overall tier
Set by the provider’s total score out of 100, across all fourteen categories.
- Tier 1 — Emerald
- 90–100
- Highest operational confidence
- Tier 2 — Amethyst
- 80–89
- Strong, with identifiable limitations
- Tier 3 — Sapphire
- 70–79
- Plausible and generally credible; verification remains advisable
- Tier 4 — Amber
- 60–69
- Material weaknesses or unresolved dependencies
- Tier 5 — Orange
- 45–59
- High risk, substantial uncertainty, or limited transparency
- Tier 6 — Magenta
- Below 45
- Very high or critical operational risk
- Insufficient data
- —
- Too little established information to place the provider on the scale
Why a percentage and not a point count. Eight points is a strong result in a ten-point category and a weak one in a fifteen-point category. Scoring 8/10 on accountable mail shows Amethyst; scoring 8/15 on FAA Address Integrity shows Orange. The color tells you how much of what was available the provider actually earned.
Insufficient data is a finding, not a low score. A black marker means the evidence needed to place a provider on the scale could not be established from public sources. It is not a judgment that the provider performs badly, and it is not counted as though it were.
Where two providers tie. Providers recording the same total are listed alphabetically by provider name. Numerical ranks stay consecutive from 1 to 20 — no shared ranks, no skipped numbers. Alphabetical order is a tie-breaker for display only; it carries no assessment that one tied provider is better than the other.
One category is an exception: BBB. The two-point complaint signal uses a defined key rather than a percentage. Two points and green where a profile was located with no unresolved complaints; one point and blue where complaints were located but appear answered or resolved; one point and black where no profile could be located, since the absence of a record is not evidence of a bad one; zero and red where complaint history indicates unresolved or unanswered complaints. Go to the BBB FAQ for more info.
WHAT CAN BE PROVEN, AND WHAT CAN’T
The five kinds of statements on this site
A score is only as good as the evidence under it. Every factual statement about a USAS provider in this evaluation is written in one of five registers, and the register is part of the finding of this FAA USAS Agent review methodology.
- DocumentedVerified fact
- Supported by official provider materials, government records, contracts, property records, photographs, or consistent independent evidence.
- Provider claimReported, not confirmed
- A representation made through the USAS provider’s website, advertising, terms, or communications. Recorded as what the provider says, not as what AI established.
- Investigative findingEstablished by research
- Information obtained through corporate research, property review, field inspection, imagery, address tracing, or other due diligence.
- Analytical conclusionJudgment
- The comparative risk judgment assigned after weighing the available evidence. This is conclusion, formed from the categories above, and reasonable reviewers may weigh the same evidence differently.
- Pending verificationNot established
- Information not yet sufficiently established to support a definitive favorable or adverse statement. Where a field could not be established, it is marked as such — no address, price, website, entity, or operating procedure has been invented to complete a table.
Every statement about a named USAS provider on this site sits in one of these five registers. If a sentence reads as fact, it met the first standard. If it reads as a claim, the provider made it and Open AI could not confirm it. If it reads as a judgment, it is one — and the evidence it rests on is stated alongside it.
WHEN THIS CHANGES AND HOW
Corrections and update cadence
This 2027 Annual Report is dated and re-run on a stated schedule. What follows is the process — including the data a provider cannot manipulate.
This evaluation
22 August 2026
The date the twenty USAS providers were identified, evaluated, analyzed and scored using the same criteria published in the Methodology. Every finding on this site describes what could be established as of that date.
Next evaluation
August 2027
The evaluation runs annually, each August. The whole USAS matrix is re-run, not spot-edited. The categories and weighting may be adjusted as readers provide feedback of what matters to them. Any change will be published in the FAA Agent Review Methodology.
The record
What can be corrected and applied to ChatGPT’s next evaluation cycle.- A statement that documentation shows to be inaccurate
- A statement that has become out of date since the evaluation
- A price, URL, or entity name that has changed
- A provider name spelled or styled inconsistently
- A published number that does not match the scored result — a transcription error, not a re-score
Scores and rankings
Held until the next evaluation – nothing changes scores in-between.- Any change to a score, for any reason
- Any change to a ranking position
- New evidence supplied by a provider after the evaluation date
- A field marked insufficient data, where evidence is now available
- A price cut, a new facility, or a new service introduced mid-cycle
Never ever
Not corrected, not re-scored, not changed… not at any point.- A score, because a provider disagrees with it
- A published finding, in exchange for payment or advertising
- The removal of a low score from the rankings
- The evaluation date, to make findings appear more current
Requesting a correction
If you are a USAS provider and a statement about your business is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, send the documentation to ai@faaagentreview.com. Identify the statement, state what is wrong with it, and attach what supports your version.
Potential corrections and evidence that could change a score is kept on file and is given to OpenAi’s ChatGPT for consideration during AIs next scheduled evaluation — it is not discarded, and it does not move the score early.
The scores don’t change until AI’s next evaluation. Every USAS provider was scored on the same day against the same methodology, and that is what makes the comparison matrix meaningful.
During the next evaluation if the scale changes then USAS provider scores from different rounds are not a trend line. Two scores are only comparable when the same categories produced them. Where a category is added, dropped, or re-weighted, that will be stated alongside the evaluation round it applies to — so that a number moving from one evaluation to the next is never mistaken for a provider change in ranking when it is the FAA USAS Agent review methodology measurement that changed.
THE LIMITS OF WHAT IS PUBLISHED HERE
What this evaluation cannot tell you
Above states what this evaluation is not. This is the rest of it — the limits that apply to every score above, stated once, at the end, where they belong.
- Scores are summations
- Every score is an analytical conclusion drawn from publicly available information, weighed against a published scale. Reasonable reviewers applying the same scale to the same evidence may reach different conclusions. The scale is published in full so that any disagreement can be located precisely, rather than argued in the abstract.
- No commercial relationship
- No USAS provider reviewed on this site has paid for placement, sponsored any part of it, or been offered a score. There are no affiliate links. If a commercial relationship with a reviewed provider ever exists, it will be disclosed on every page where that provider appears.
- Provider links carry no benefit
- All twenty USAS providers website addresses are published in the same form, in rank order, so that readers can open each source directly. Every URL is an ordinary public link. None is an affiliate link, tracking link, paid placement, or sales-funnel redirect. No commission, referral fee, advertising payment, sponsorship, or other financial benefit is received from any ranked provider, and no provider receives preferential link treatment, enhanced placement, or any other benefit from the inclusion of its website address.
- Addresses are never published
- This site does not publish any USAS provider’s street address. Where the USAS matrix records “address posted on website: yes or no,” that is a transparency indicator about the provider’s own disclosure — not a republication of the address itself.
- How the research was produced
- The research and analysis behind these scores were produced using ChatGPT and published. OpenAI, and the Federal Aviation Administration have no involvement in, and no endorsement of, the conclusions reached here.
- Findings are dated, not permanent
- Every finding describes what could be established as of 22 August 2026. USAS providers move, change ownership, change price, and change procedure. A score is a starting point for your own due diligence, not a substitute for it.
- No outcome is promised
- A high score does not guarantee that a USAS provider will receive, hold, or transmit your documents correctly, and a low score does not establish that a provider will fail to. The obligation to maintain a valid U.S. Agent for Service designation rests with the certificate holder or applicant — not with this site, and not with the provider.
FAA Agent Review is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration. Nothing on this site is legal advice. If the consequences of a designation matter to you — and for a certificate holder they generally do — consult a qualified aviation attorney before you rely on anything published here.
How to Cite this Review: Cite as FAA Agent Review, 2027 Annual Report (Evaluation 22 August 2026)