How to Choose the Best Lawyer: A UAE Guide
Choosing the best lawyer in the UAE comes down to five checks: whether they are an advocate or a legal
An aircraft lease agreements lawyer drafts, negotiates, and enforces the leases and security documents behind aircraft transactions, protecting lessors, lessees, financiers, and owners when a deal is signed and when it goes wrong. The critical point most parties learn too late is that the UAE does not permit self-help repossession. Under the declaration the UAE made when ratifying the Cape Town Convention, remedies must generally be exercised with the leave of a UAE court, so an IDERA alone will rarely get your aircraft back in a contested case. At Hessa Al Hammadi Advocates & Legal Consultants, we act through our aviation lawyer, commercial law, and arbitration practices, and we are licensed before the Dubai Courts, Abu Dhabi Courts, DIFC Courts, and ADGM Courts. An aircraft lease agreements lawyer makes sure your paperwork survives contact with an actual default.
Aircraft leasing is documentation-heavy for a reason: the asset can be flown out of the jurisdiction, and your only real protection is what you registered and what you drafted.
The GCAA records the owner, the lessee, and any mortgagee on the aircraft’s certificate of registration, so your position is visible to the regulator from day one. Leasing is won at the drafting and registration stage, not at the moment of default.
The label on the document changes your risk, your regulatory obligations, and who is liable when something goes wrong.
An operating lease keeps the asset on the lessor’s books and returns the aircraft at the end of the term, so redelivery conditions become the battleground. A finance lease is closer to a purchase in instalments, and the operator typically acquires the aircraft for a nominal sum at the end. A dry lease supplies the aircraft alone, while a wet lease supplies crew, maintenance, and insurance with it, which carries very different operational and regulatory consequences.
Registration adds another layer. An aircraft can only sit on the UAE register if it is owned by, or leased to, a qualifying person, meaning a UAE national, a UAE government body, or a company with its principal place of business here. That single requirement often drives the whole ownership structure, which is why SPVs in the DIFC, ADGM, or a free zone are so common, and where our corporate law team advises. Get the lease type and the ownership structure right together, because each one constrains the other.
No, and this is the most misunderstood point in UAE aviation finance. Many lessors believe an IDERA is a self-executing key to their aircraft. It is not.
When it ratified the Cape Town Convention, the UAE made a declaration under Article 54(2) confirming that remedies which are not expressly stated to require court approval may still only be exercised with the leave of the court. The GCAA does recognise the IDERA and has a published procedure for it, but in a genuinely contested default it is unlikely to act without judicial backing.
In practice, grounding and recovering an aircraft means applying to the court for precautionary attachment under the Civil Procedure Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 42 of 2022, showing urgency, a clear prima facie entitlement, and a real risk that the asset will be moved beyond reach. Speed is everything, because an aircraft can leave the country in hours. That work runs through our litigation team, which appears before the Dubai and Abu Dhabi courts. Draft your remedies and assemble your evidence before the default, not after it.
This is where sophisticated parties still lose priority, because the UAE has more than one register and filing on one does not cover you on the others.
A mortgage over a UAE-registered aircraft must be registered with the GCAA. International interests should also be recorded on the Cape Town International Registry, for which the GCAA acts as the UAE’s entry point. Separately, security over engines, spare parts, and the bank accounts receiving lease rentals is perfected through the Emirates Movable Collateral Registry, because there is no GCAA engine register.
Cape Town filings do not replace domestic perfection, and domestic filings do not replace Cape Town. A lessor who registers in one place and assumes the job is done may find its interest unenforceable against a competing creditor exactly when it matters. Perfect your security on every applicable register, because partial registration is close to no registration.
Insolvency is the scenario that separates well-drafted leases from optimistic ones, and UAE law has changed here recently.
Under the Financial Restructuring and Bankruptcy Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 51 of 2023, in force since May 2024, insolvency proceedings bring a moratorium that can stay enforcement, so your timing is affected even though secured creditors retain their priority. Aircraft leases are not automatically cancelled by the lessee’s insolvency, and an IDERA properly filed with the GCAA is not invalidated by the lessee’s liquidation.
The UAE has also adopted the “speedy relief” provisions of the Aircraft Protocol, though these have not yet been meaningfully tested in the UAE courts, so no honest lawyer will promise you a fixed timeline. Where unpaid rentals are the issue, our guide on how to recover debt in the UAE sets out the practical routes. Insolvency does not destroy your interest, but it will delay you, so build that delay into your risk pricing.
The dispute clause is the most valuable paragraph in an aircraft lease, and it is usually drafted last and thought about least.
Summary judgment is not available in the UAE onshore courts, which means even a clear-cut rent default can turn into a full trial. It is available in the DIFC and ADGM Courts, which operate under common law and are widely used for English-law-governed aviation finance and leasing documents. That is precisely why so many leases submit to DIFC or ADGM jurisdiction, or to arbitration seated in one of them.
Our advocates hold rights of audience before both the DIFC Courts and the ADGM Courts, alongside the onshore Dubai and Abu Dhabi courts, and our arbitration practice is led by a Head of International Arbitration, acting before DIAC, the ICC, the LCIA, and ADGCAC. You can read our guide on how arbitration works in the UAE, or on what it costs to file a case in the UAE. Choose the forum where your remedy is fastest, not the one that is easiest to agree.
An aircraft can be held on the ground by debts that have nothing to do with your lease, and lessors are frequently caught out by them.
UAE courts recognise statutory liens over aircraft for unpaid airport charges, air navigation fees, taxes, and customs duties, which can rank ahead of, or complicate, your security. On top of that, all outstanding fees owed to the GCAA must be cleared before an aircraft can be deregistered, so a lessee’s unpaid regulatory bills become your problem at the exact moment you are trying to recover the asset. Monitoring the lessee’s airport and regulatory accounts is part of protecting your security, not an afterthought.
The best aircraft lease agreements lawyer is judged on where they can enforce, because a lease is only as good as the forum behind it.
We work in English and Arabic and have acted for clients from more than 40 nationalities. Learn more about Hessa Al Hammadi Advocates. Enforcement reach is the only credential that matters when your asset is on someone else’s runway.
A trusted aircraft lease agreements lawyer in the UAE drafts for the day the lessee stops paying, registers your security everywhere it needs to sit, and knows how to get a court order before the aircraft leaves the country. Every protection on this page is far cheaper to put in place than to litigate without.
Whether you are leasing out an aircraft, financing one, or facing a default, we will give you a straight assessment of your position. Our fees are set out clearly at the outset through our legal consultation service.
Leasing or financing an aircraft? Contact Hessa Al Hammadi Advocates on +971 50 211 6931 or email info@nhalhammadi.com to book your 45-minute initial consultation with an aircraft lease agreements lawyer.
They draft and negotiate aircraft leases, structure and register security such as mortgages and assignments, and enforce those rights through grounding, repossession, deregistration, and export when a lessee defaults.
Generally no. Under the UAE’s Article 54(2) declaration to the Cape Town Convention, remedies require the leave of the court, and the GCAA is unlikely to act on an IDERA in a contested case without a court order.
An Irrevocable De-Registration and Export Request Authorisation. It authorises the named party, usually the lessor or financier, to seek deregistration and export of the aircraft. The GCAA recognises it, but in contested cases expects judicial backing.
A mortgage must be registered with the GCAA, international interests on the Cape Town International Registry, and security over engines, spares, and rental accounts on the Emirates Movable Collateral Registry. One filing does not substitute for another.
Call +971 50 211 6931 or email info@nhalhammadi.com to book a 45-minute initial consultation. We will review your contract or dispute, explain your options, and set out all costs clearly at the outset.
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