What Is the FAA Civil Aviation Registry?
January 20, 2026
The Registry in Plain English
The FAA Civil Aviation Registry is the official government database maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration that tracks every civil aircraft registered in the United States. It records who owns each aircraft, what type of aircraft it is, where it is based, and whether its registration is currently active. The registry is a public record — all of its data is freely available to anyone who wants to look.
What the Registry Contains
For each registered aircraft, the FAA Civil Aviation Registry holds:
- The N-number (tail number)
- Registrant name and mailing address
- Aircraft make, model, and series
- Year of manufacture
- Aircraft type (fixed-wing, rotorcraft, glider, balloon, etc.)
- Engine type and number of engines
- Airworthiness classification
- Mode S transponder code (a unique hex identifier used in air traffic control)
- Registration status and expiration date
Who Maintains It?
The registry is maintained by the FAA Aircraft Registration Branch, located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Aircraft owners submit registration applications, renewals, and change-of-ownership paperwork to this office. The data is updated on a regular basis — typically nightly — and the FAA releases the full dataset as a bulk download that third-party services use to build lookup tools like this one.
How Many Aircraft Are in the Registry?
At any given time, the active registry contains approximately 310,000 civil aircraft. This includes everything from large commercial airliners to single-engine piston planes, helicopters, gliders, balloons, and experimental homebuilts. The total number shifts as new aircraft are registered and others are deregistered.
Why Is It Public?
Aircraft registration data is a public record by law. This transparency serves several purposes: it supports accountability for who is operating aircraft in public airspace, it enables law enforcement and regulators to track ownership, and it allows buyers and sellers to verify the history and status of aircraft. Journalists, researchers, and aviation enthusiasts rely on the registry constantly.
You can explore the registry by state, by manufacturer, or search for a specific aircraft using the tail number lookup. The data sources page explains how this site processes the FAA released data.