Look up an aircraft by its tail number
A TailFax report sets out what public FAA and NTSB records say about one US-registered aircraft, and what they cannot say.
What a TailFax contains
A TailFax has three parts. The first describes the model: what it is, its accident record, the airworthiness directives for the type and how often it changes hands. The second covers this aircraft alone: its registration, the directives that apply to it, NTSB events for its tail number and its recorded documents. The third says what the report cannot tell you and lists every source with the date it was loaded.
Where the data comes from
Public records only. Each report prints every source with the date it was last loaded.
- FAA aircraft registry
- Registration, serial number and engine record of every US-registered aircraft.
- FAA airworthiness directives, via the Federal Register
- The published text of each directive, from which the models and serial ranges it covers are read.
- NTSB accident database
- Accident and incident records.
- FAA recorded documents (DOCINDEX)
- The index of documents filed against an aircraft, such as bills of sale.
- FAA releasable airmen database
- Pilots and mechanics who allow their record to be released.
- Weekly FAA registry snapshots
- Owner changes, found by comparing one week's registry with the next.
What it cannot tell you
No maintenance records or logbooks. Nothing here shows how the aircraft was maintained, what was repaired, or whether any directive was complied with: the report shows which directives apply, not whether they were done.
No damage history beyond NTSB records. Damage that was never reported to the NTSB does not appear.
It is not an inspection. It is a summary of public records, a starting point for questions, and not a verdict on the aircraft.
Use it alongside the aircraft's own logbooks, a pre-purchase inspection and a title search, not in place of them.