How to check an aircraft's history before buying

1. Start with the FAA registry: who, what, since when

Every U.S.-registered aircraft — 307,278 airframes are on the registry today — has a public FAA record tied to its N-number: manufacturer, model, serial number, engine, year built, registrant and registration status. Three things to verify first:

• Identity. The serial number on the data plate, the logbooks and the registry must all agree. N-numbers get reused — a registration that migrated between airframes can silently attach another aircraft's history to the one you're buying.
• Status. The registration should be valid and current. An expired or "in question" status is a paperwork problem you inherit at closing.
• Certificate date. The issue date of the current registration certificate is the FAA's public marker of the last registration change — your first clue to how long the seller has actually owned it.

Where: registry.faa.gov, free. Our reports include the registry extract automatically.

2. Search the NTSB database: accidents and incidents

The National Transportation Safety Board investigates U.S. civil aviation accidents and serious incidents; we track 13,616 NTSB records since 2008. For a buyer, an NTSB hit is not automatically disqualifying — a properly repaired hard landing two owners ago may be fine — but you must know three things: what happened, how it was repaired, and whether the repair appears in the logbooks with the right sign-offs.

The trap: searching by N-number alone. Because registrations are reused, an N-number search can return another airframe's accident — or miss one that happened under a previous registration. Always reconcile through the serial number. (This serial check is built into every TailGuard report; it is the single most common error we see in do-it-yourself record checks.)

Where: data.ntsb.gov CAROL query, free.

3. Pull the Service Difficulty Reports: what actually breaks

When a component fails in service, mechanics and operators file a Service Difficulty Report with the FAA — 730,692 of them since 1995 in our database. Two ways to use them:

• On the airframe: any SDR filed against the exact registration is a documented failure event — bring it to the pre-buy.
• On the type: the pattern of which systems get reported most (landing gear, engine, flight controls…) tells your mechanic where to look first. Our model buyer's guides compute these patterns per type from the raw data.

Filing is voluntary and skews toward commercial operators, so absence of SDRs is encouraging but never proof of a clean airframe.

4. Check the Airworthiness Directives: the legally binding list

An Airworthiness Directive is a legally enforceable FAA rule requiring inspection, repair or replacement on affected aircraft. ADs apply by type or component — which means no database can tell you whether a specific airframe complied. Only its logbooks can. The method:

• Build the list of ADs applicable to the make/model (including engine and propeller ADs) — and note the recurring ones, which must be re-complied with at set intervals.
• At the pre-buy, have your mechanic tick every AD off against the logbook entries — number by number, with dates and signatures.
• Treat any gap as a real cost: an overdue recurring AD is money you will spend right after closing.

Where: drs.faa.gov (Dynamic Regulatory System), free but laborious — our report ships the matched AD list with open/recurring status per type.

5. Read the ownership trail — carefully

The FAA publishes only the CURRENT owner in its bulk data. A reconstructed ownership history (which we build by comparing monthly registry snapshots) shows how often the aircraft changed hands recently. What to make of it:

• A long, stable ownership is the pattern you like to see.
• A recent change is neutral — people sell aircraft for a thousand honest reasons.
• Several changes in quick succession is a question to ask the seller directly: aircraft that resell fast sometimes do so because each new owner discovers the same problem.

One thing you will NOT get from us: private owners' names. Our reports mask individuals ("Private owner, TX") — the registry is public, but doxxing sellers is not a service.

What the public record cannot tell you

Be suspicious of anyone who sells you a "complete" history from public data alone. The public record does not contain: logbooks and maintenance entries, damage that was repaired without an NTSB report or SDR, corrosion, how the aircraft was stored, or whether the engine was flown regularly. That is why the sequence ends the same way every time: records first, then a physical pre-purchase inspection by a licensed A&P/IA you chose — never the seller's mechanic. The records tell the inspector where to look; they never replace the inspection.

The 10-minute version

1. Verify identity: serial number on the data plate = logbooks = registry.
2. Check registration status and the current certificate's issue date.
3. Search NTSB records — reconciled by serial, not just N-number.
4. Pull the SDRs on the airframe, and the type's most-reported systems.
5. Build the applicable AD list; flag every recurring AD.
6. Read the recent ownership pattern.
7. Hand everything to your own A&P/IA for the physical pre-buy and the logbook audit.