Many anxious aircraft operators scrambled to keep the August 31 deadline for registering for Europe’s new emissions trading scheme (ETS) amid widespread confusion about the exact timetable for the process through which it will be implemented. The European Commission took until August 22 to publish a full list of operators who are subject to the ETS and the list of national agencies in each of the 27 European Union states to which each individual operator is obliged to submit its monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) plans. This left operators with just six working days to register plans. The delay in publishing the list of operators prompted the UK’s Environment Agency to defer the August 31 deadline until November 12. Its German counterpart is also willing to allow more time, indicating that it will allow an additional six months or so, taking the unspecified deadline into mid-October. However, other EU states have not publicly given operators assigned to them more time to file MRV plans, leaving them to fret about the consequences of not meeting the original August 31 deadline. Several operators have complained to AIN that they have been unable to get any response from officials at the national agencies with which they are supposed to register monitoring, reporting and verification plans and so they have not been clear on exactly what is required of them.