Disclaimer

Last updated: June 2026

TAILGUARD reports are informational intelligence reports compiled from public U.S. government data sources: the FAA Aircraft Registry, the NTSB accident and incident database (CAROL), the FAA Service Difficulty Reporting system, and Airworthiness Directives published in the Federal Register. The exact sources and extraction dates are cited in every report.

A TAILGUARD report is not:

• an airworthiness certification or any form of official FAA/NTSB document;
• a substitute for a physical pre-purchase inspection of the aircraft and its maintenance logbooks by a licensed A&P/IA mechanic;
• a title search or lien check;
• legal, financial or airworthiness advice.

Public datasets have known limitations, which each report documents: voluntary and under-reported SDR filings in general aviation, only the current owner being published by the FAA, AD applicability matched by make/model rather than serial number, and reused registration numbers (TAILGUARD cross-checks airframe serial numbers against NTSB records and flags mismatches).

TAILGUARD does not rate or grade aircraft. The coverage figure on each report counts how many of the public sources above returned information on that airframe: it measures the size of the available paper trail, never the condition of the aircraft, and a low figure means less information was available to us rather than a problem with the aircraft.