That seems the opposite of the intended effect. If the buyer is able to buy that plane change the registration (lease it back to Delta even ! )and fly the same plane to Accura.
Changing Tail numbers are fairly rare in the industry, given the overhead required, the typical reason it happens when for Tax reasons registration is moved to another country ( numbers have a country prefix), but it is possible .
Authorities aren't computers blindly evaluating code. If Delta tried to sell and then lease the plane I'm pretty sure that the authorities would not just catch on, but find a way to substantially penalize Delta to discourage anyone from trying such a stunt again. Meanwhile it's substantially less work from Delta's point of view to not do that (even before considering the regulators response), so it's not something that's really worth worrying about.
It's reasonable for regulators to assume that people aren't going to intentionally fuck with them, when the incentive to fuck with them is practically non-existent...
Sure regulators and authorities are not evaluating regulations like that, but the entity being subject to that regulation frequently challenge such interpretations of regulations and win in court all the time.
While the spirit of a law or regulation is important in evaluating a case[1],
even the smallest of technicalities are fought over in lawsuits and can determine the outcome of a dispute like this. There are many examples like the famous case that was determined by the Oxford comma to all the cases that decide what EPA, OSHA, CDC, or SEC can and cannot do decided by technicality or literal interpretation
So it would be kind of important to have that kind of loophole removed.
[1] Texualist proponents and federalist society judges have a strong opinion (when it comes to constitution) that add to my point on that but that is different can of worms I don't want to use as basis of an argument
Changing Tail numbers are fairly rare in the industry, given the overhead required, the typical reason it happens when for Tax reasons registration is moved to another country ( numbers have a country prefix), but it is possible .