faa.gov

lookup-aircraft

Installation

Adds this website's skill for your agents

 

Summary

Look up a US-registered aircraft in the FAA Aircraft Registry by N-number, manufacturer serial, registrant name, or make/model. Returns full registration record (owner, aircraft, airworthiness, Mode-S, status) via direct HTTP GET — no browser, no anti-CSRF dance.

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SKILL.md
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FAA Aircraft Registry Lookup

Purpose

Given an aircraft N-number (tail number), manufacturer serial number, registrant name, or make/model, return the FAA Aircraft Registry record(s) for that aircraft — including N-number, serial, manufacturer/model/year, aircraft + engine type, Mode-S code (hex + octal), registered owner name + address, registrant type, certificate/expiration/last-action dates, current registration status, airworthiness class/category/date, and the canonical detail-page URL. Read-only; never submits any change-of-address, sale, or re-registration form.

When to Use

  • Convert a tail number spotted on a flight tracker, ramp photo, or ADS-B Mode-S hex into the registered owner + aircraft type.
  • Reverse-lookup a hex Mode-S code → N-number (search by Mode-S range, or scan the bulk database).
  • Audit who owns an aircraft serial across all N-numbers it has ever worn (older airframes get re-registered with new tail numbers over their lifetime).
  • Find every aircraft owned by a person or LLC (e.g. "what does FALCON LANDING LLC own?").
  • Verify a registration is Valid vs Expired/Sale Reported/Revoked before a transaction.
  • Pre-flight insurance underwriting, title research, ramp identification.

Workflow

The FAA Aircraft Inquiry at registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/ is built on ASP.NET MVC (the prompt's mention of __VIEWSTATE/__EVENTVALIDATION refers to the legacy .aspx version that has been retired). The current site uses anti-forgery tokens (__RequestVerificationToken) for POST submissions, but every Search/*Result endpoint also accepts the same field as a plain GET query string — so the optimal path is a one-shot HTTP GET with no browser, no cookies, no token. A residential-proxy fetch (browse cloud fetch --proxies) handles all observed Akamai-Bot-Manager challenges without a real session.

1. Lookup by N-number (single record, richest output)

GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt={N}
  • {N} may be supplied with or without a leading N — both N12345 and 12345 work.
  • Field name is case-sensitive: NNumbertxt (lowercase trailing txt). The internal links elsewhere on the FAA site use the variant NNumberTxt (capital T); both currently resolve to the same handler, but stick with NNumbertxt to match what the live form posts.
  • An invalid N-number (too long, illegal character, etc.) responds 302 redirect to /AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry?error=<reason>&nnumber=<echo> — check the Location header to distinguish "bad input" from "no record".

Parse the HTML response. The canonical detail page is the request URL itself (/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=N12345).

2. Lookup by serial number, registrant name, or make/model (list output)

GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/SerialNumberResult?Serialtxt={s}&sort_option={1|2|3|4}
GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NameResult?nametxt={n}&sort_option={1|2|3|4}
GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/MakeModelResult?Maketxt={mfr}&Modeltxt={model}&sort_option={1|2|3|4}

sort_option values are identical across inquiries: 1=N-Number, 2=Manufacturer Name, 3=Model Name, 4=Name (registrant).

These return paginated HTML tables. Each row is a partial summary (N-Number, serial, manufacturer + model, registrant name + address) with a link to the per-aircraft detail page (/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumberTxt=<n>). To get full detail per result, follow each link.

Tip — skip HTML parsing on multi-result inquiries by using the built-in CSV export: the result page exposes two RPC endpoints that produce machine-readable downloads. Two-step:

# 1. Trigger generation — returns JSON { data: "<filename>.csv", server: "<prefix>" }
GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/BusinessLogic/CreateSerialNumberCSVFile?FileName=SerialNumber&serial=6177
# 2. Download the CSV from a date-stamped directory
GET https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/SpreadSheets/{MM-DD-YYYY}/SerialNumber{MM-DD-YYYY}.csv

Equivalent endpoints exist for CreateNameCSVFile, CreateMakeModelCSVFile, CreateNNumberCSVFile, and a …ExcelFile variant of each. The CSV has fixed-width-padded columns (right-padded with spaces) — strip trailing whitespace per cell.

3. Parse the N-Number result HTML

The detail page is a series of <table class="devkit-table"> blocks, each preceded by a <caption class="devkit-table-title"> naming the section. The reliable cell-extraction pattern is "label-cell followed by value-cell"; rows alternate left-pair / right-pair so a single row carries two field/value pairs.

Sections that appear, in order:

  • Aircraft Description — Serial Number, Status, Manufacturer Name, Certificate Issue Date, Model, Expiration Date, Type Aircraft, Type Engine, Pending Number Change, Dealer, Date Change Authorized, Mode S Code (base 8 / Oct), MFR Year, Mode S Code (Base 16 / Hex), Type Registration, Fractional Owner.
  • Registered Owner — Name, Street, City, State, County, Zip Code, Country.
  • An airworthiness block (no caption — title is the all-caps disclaimer about not using this data for airworthiness determinations) — Type Certificate Data Sheet, Type Certificate Holder, Engine Manufacturer, Classification, Engine Model, Category, A/W Date, Exception Code.
  • Other Owner Names — table of co-owners (or "None").
  • Temporary Certificates — Certificate Number, Issue Date, Expiration Date (or "None").
  • Fuel Modifications — usually "None".

Map Type Registration to the registrant-type taxonomy: Individual / Partnership / Corporation / Co-Owned / Government / LLC / Non-Citizen Corp / Non-Citizen Co-Owned. Map Status to one of Valid / Pending / Expired / Sale Reported / Revoked / De-Registered / Reserved etc. Map Type Aircraft to Fixed Wing Single-Engine / Fixed Wing Multi-Engine / Rotorcraft / Glider / Balloon / Airship / Weight-Shift / Powered-Parachute / Hybrid Lift.

4. Branch on the leading sentence

The result page opens with one of these one-liners — use it as a fast branch hint before walking tables:

Lead textMeaningSchema
{N} is AssignedCurrently registered, single recordFull assigned output
{N} has Assigned/Multiple RecordsCurrently registered AND has historical/deregistered recordsFull assigned output, set has_prior_records: true
{N} is Deregistered / {N} is De-registeredLast registration was cancelledderegistered output (current Status reflects the cancel reason)
(Reserved N-Number table only)Number is reserved but no aircraft assigned yetreserved output: Type Reservation, Mode S Code, Reserved Date, Renewal Date, Purge Date, Pending Number Change, Date Change Authorized, Reserving Party Name
302 → /NNumberInquiry?error=…Invalid input formaterror output, surface the URL-encoded reason

5. Releasing data the web inquiry does NOT expose

The web inquiry returns only the current record. Despite the prompt's request for deregistration record (cancel date + reason) and the full chain of prior registrants, the FAA AircraftInquiry site does not surface either on NNumberResult — the has Assigned/Multiple Records lead text is informational only and is not a link. There is no "History" tab on the current site. Two honest fallbacks:

  1. https://registry.faa.gov/database/ReleasableAircraft.zip — the FAA's full Releasable Aircraft Database, rebuilt every federal working day. Contains MASTER.txt, ACFTREF.txt, ENGINE.txt, DEREG.txt (deregistered records), RESERVED.txt, and DEALER.txt. Use this for any batch query or any query that needs deregistration history. A single download is ~70 MB and covers the entire US civil register.
  2. https://aircraft.faa.gov/e.gov/nd/ — Request For Aircraft Records — official FOIA-style channel to order a copy of the historical paper record for a specific N-number (paid, mail-back). Not scriptable.

If the user wants prior-registrant chain on a specific N-number with no flat-file pipeline available, surface a has_prior_records: true flag with the ReleasableAircraft.zip reference and stop — don't fabricate history from the current record.

6. (Browser fallback) only when the GET endpoint is blocked

Should Akamai upgrade from latent to active blocking (it is currently dormant — see Gotchas), drop down to a browser session with stealth + residential proxy and submit the form interactively:

sid=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --proxies --verified \
  | node -e "let s='';process.stdin.on('data',c=>s+=c).on('end',()=>process.stdout.write(JSON.parse(s).id))")
export BROWSE_SESSION="$sid"
browse open "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry" --remote
browse fill --remote @<NNumbertxt-ref> "N628TS"
browse click --remote @<submit-ref>
browse get markdown body --remote
browse cloud sessions update "$sid" --status REQUEST_RELEASE

Browser fallback pays ~30s wall + a session cost per lookup vs. the ~1s direct GET — only worth it if direct fetches return 200 OK with an Akamai challenge body or 403 for several consecutive attempts.

Site-Specific Gotchas

  • Anti-CSRF tokens are POST-only. __RequestVerificationToken (cookie + hidden field) is required for the form's POST submission, but every Search/*Result endpoint also accepts the field as a GET query parameter with no token. Verified 2026-05-19 on NNumberResult, SerialNumberResult, NameResult. Always prefer GET — it eliminates the cookie/CSRF dance entirely.
  • Akamai Bot Manager IS present but dormant. Every result page includes the Akamai sensor (<script>bazadebezolkohpepadr=… + /akam/13/{path} script tag). During this skill's iteration we observed zero active challenges from a residential-proxy browse cloud fetch — all requests returned 200 OK with full data. Treat 403/timeout as evidence the protection has been activated, not as a sign your URL is wrong, and switch to a stealth browser session.
  • Field name case-mismatch. The form's actual input is NNumbertxt (lowercase txt). Internal anchors on result tables link with NNumberTxt (capital T). ASP.NET MVC's model-binder is case-insensitive on parameter names, so both work — but if you compose URLs by hand, use the lowercase form to match the canonical form-submission.
  • Leading N is optional. NNumbertxt=N12345 and NNumbertxt=12345 both resolve to the same record. The result page always echoes the input back as "N-Number Entered: 12345" (without the N) regardless.
  • has Assigned/Multiple Records is informational text, not a link. It signals that the FAA's database has historical/deregistered records under this N-number — but they are not navigable from the web inquiry. The text is plain <p>, not an <a>. See Workflow §5 for how to actually retrieve those records.
  • Invalid input returns 302, not 4xx. Anything that fails the format validator (>5 characters, illegal alpha pattern, etc.) responds 302 Location: /AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry?error=...&nnumber=.... Don't treat the redirect as an HTTP failure — the human-readable reason is in the error query param of the Location header.
  • CSV download is a two-hop indirection. BusinessLogic/Create*CSVFile returns JSON { data: "<filename>", server: "<prefix>" } that points to a date-stamped path under /AircraftInquiry/SpreadSheets/{MM-DD-YYYY}/. The CSV is staged at request time; don't expect a stable URL across days.
  • CSV cells are space-right-padded to fixed widths. Strip trailing whitespace on every value. Address cells embed a literal newline-equivalent — the CSV writer concatenates "City, State Zip" with a double-space separator inside the quoted cell.
  • Multiple aircraft can share a serial number. Serial numbers are unique within a (manufacturer, model) pair but not globally — e.g. serial 6177 matches 7 aircraft across BOMBARDIER, PIPER, CAMERON BALLOONS, DOUGLAS, GULFSTREAM, TAYLORCRAFT, CESSNA. Always pair Serialtxt with the manufacturer when the user supplies one.
  • MFR Year, A/W Date, Engine Manufacturer, etc. are commonly None/Unknown. Drone-class registrations (DJI, Skydio, Autel) routinely lack airworthiness data because they're operated under 14 CFR Part 107 and don't carry standard airworthiness certificates. Don't treat absence as an error.
  • Mode-S code is published in both octal (base 8 / Oct) and hex (Base 16 / Hex). These are the same 24-bit ICAO address rendered in two bases. Hex (A061D9) is what ADS-B trackers use; octal (50060731) is the legacy FAA format. Both are emitted on every record.
  • Reserved N-numbers have a completely different table schema. Don't try to apply the assigned-aircraft parser to a reserved-number page — Reserving Party Name, Type Reservation, Reserved Date, Renewal Date, Purge Date replace the aircraft/owner fields.
  • Type Registration enum is the source of truth for registrant type. Observed values: Individual, Partnership, Corporation, Co-Owned, Government, LLC, Non Citizen Corporation, Non Citizen Co-Owned. Other dimensions (Dealer, Fractional Owner) are separate Yes/No fields, not subtypes.
  • Data is updated each federal working day at midnight (Central). A registration submitted today won't appear in the web inquiry or the bulk download until the next morning. Don't retry under one second hoping for new data.
  • registry.faa.gov redirects to a static landing first. A bare GET https://registry.faa.gov/ returns a 10-second-meta-refresh splash page, not the inquiry app. Skip it — go directly to /AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry (form) or /AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?... (result).
  • No batch API. There is no documented or undocumented batch-lookup endpoint on registry.faa.gov. For more than a few dozen lookups per day, download ReleasableAircraft.zip and query it locally — that is what every commercial aircraft-data product does.

Expected Output

Four primary outcome shapes for an N-number lookup. List-lookups (serial/name/make-model) emit { "matches": [<assigned-shape-summary>, …] }.

// Active assignment (single record) — N628TS
{
  "success": true,
  "outcome": "assigned",
  "has_prior_records": false,
  "n_number": "N628TS",
  "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=N628TS",
  "aircraft": {
    "serial_number": "6177",
    "manufacturer": "GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE CORP",
    "model": "GVI (G650ER)",
    "year_manufactured": 2015,
    "type_aircraft": "Fixed Wing Multi-Engine",
    "type_engine": "Turbo-fan",
    "engine_manufacturer": "ROLLS DEUT",
    "engine_model": "BR700-725A112",
    "mode_s_hex": "A835AF",
    "mode_s_octal": "52032657"
  },
  "registration": {
    "status": "Valid",
    "type_registration": "LLC",
    "certificate_issue_date": "2016-03-31",
    "expiration_date": "2029-03-31",
    "dealer": false,
    "fractional_owner": false,
    "pending_number_change": null,
    "date_change_authorized": null
  },
  "registered_owner": {
    "name": "FALCON LANDING LLC",
    "street": "1 ROCKET RD",
    "city": "HAWTHORNE",
    "state": "CALIFORNIA",
    "county": "LOS ANGELES",
    "zip": "90250-6844",
    "country": "UNITED STATES"
  },
  "airworthiness": {
    "type_certificate_data_sheet": "T00015AT",
    "type_certificate_holder": "GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE CORP",
    "classification": "Standard",
    "category": "Transport",
    "airworthiness_date": "2015-03-31",
    "exception_code": true
  },
  "other_owner_names": [],
  "temporary_certificates": [
    { "certificate_number": "T252216", "issue_date": "2025-02-26", "expiration_date": "2025-03-28" }
  ],
  "fuel_modifications": [],
  "kit_manufacturer": null,
  "kit_model": null
}

// Active assignment with historical records (web inquiry exposes ONLY the current record) — N12345
{
  "success": true,
  "outcome": "assigned",
  "has_prior_records": true,
  "n_number": "N12345",
  "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=N12345",
  "aircraft": {
    "serial_number": "08QCE5J012001T",
    "manufacturer": "DJI",
    "model": "MAVIC PRO",
    "year_manufactured": null,
    "type_aircraft": "Rotorcraft",
    "type_engine": "Electric",
    "engine_manufacturer": null,
    "engine_model": null,
    "mode_s_hex": "A061D9",
    "mode_s_octal": "50060731"
  },
  "registration": {
    "status": "Valid",
    "type_registration": "Individual",
    "certificate_issue_date": "2017-08-22",
    "expiration_date": "2027-08-31",
    "dealer": false,
    "fractional_owner": false
  },
  "registered_owner": {
    "name": "GUTTERMAN ADAM D",
    "street": "100 HOGAN POINT RD",
    "city": "HILTON",
    "state": "NEW YORK",
    "county": "MONROE",
    "zip": "14468-8917",
    "country": "UNITED STATES"
  },
  "prior_registrants_note": "FAA web inquiry does NOT expose the prior-registrant chain for this N-number. Retrieve the full history from https://registry.faa.gov/database/ReleasableAircraft.zip (DEREG.txt + MASTER.txt) or order paper records via https://aircraft.faa.gov/e.gov/nd/."
}

// Reserved (number is held but no aircraft assigned yet)
{
  "success": true,
  "outcome": "reserved",
  "n_number": "N1Q",
  "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=N1Q",
  "reservation": {
    "type_reservation": "Fee Paid",
    "mode_s_octal": "50000540",
    "reserved_date": "2026-02-28",
    "renewal_date": null,
    "purge_date": "2027-03-28",
    "pending_number_change": null,
    "date_change_authorized": null,
    "reserving_party_name": "AIR SANSONE LLC"
  }
}

// Invalid input — server 302-redirects with the validator reason
{
  "success": false,
  "outcome": "invalid_input",
  "n_number_input": "ZZZZZZ",
  "reason": "N-Number is More than 5 characters",
  "redirect_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry?error=N-Number%20is%20More%20than%205%20characters&nnumber=zzzzzz"
}

// List output for serial / name / make-model — array of N-number summaries
{
  "success": true,
  "outcome": "list",
  "query": { "serial": "6177", "sort_option": 1 },
  "total_matches": 7,
  "matches": [
    { "n_number": "250QS",  "serial": "6177", "manufacturer": "BOMBARDIER INC",        "model": "CL-600-2B16", "registrant": null,                "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=250QS" },
    { "n_number": "628TS",  "serial": "6177", "manufacturer": "GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE CORP", "model": "GVI (G650ER)", "registrant": "FALCON LANDING LLC", "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=628TS" },
    { "n_number": "35157",  "serial": "6177", "manufacturer": "PIPER",                "model": "J3C-65",      "registrant": "JONES DEWEY",        "detail_url": "https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumbertxt=35157" }
  ]
}
FAA Aircraft Registry Lookup · browse.sh