How the aircraft registry figures are made

The source, and what a row is

These pages read the FAA’s Releasable Aircraft Database, Federal Aviation Administration, Aircraft Registry, as the files were retrieved on October 24, 2026. It is three files: the registry itself (one row for each aircraft), a table of aircraft models and a table of engine models.

One row of the registry is one aircraft, keyed by its N-number, and an N-number appears once. Every count here is a count of those rows, so it is a count of aircraft on one day, and never of flights, flight hours or aircraft in the air.

Registration status

Every row of the registry carries a status code, the FAA’s record of where that registration stands. Only the codes the FAA’s layout document describes as valid (V, T and M) are counted as registered on these pages; an aircraft can be listed under another status while sold, expired, revoked or awaiting registration. The file lists 317,999 aircraft in all, whatever their status, of which 312,570 are registered and 5,429 are not.

The three codes are V, “Valid Registration”; T, “Valid Registration from a Trainee”; and M, “Valid - Aircraft assigned to the manufacturer under the manufacturer’s Dealer Certificate”. The document decides which codes count, and not this site: every other definition describes a pending, expired, revoked or canceled state, a reservation, a reported sale, a notice or a form mailed or returned. The renewal notices (14, 15, 24, 25, 26 and 28) and the triennial-form codes (A, S, 1 and 8) are among them, and their words do not say valid, so none is counted.

The table of aircraft in the FAA’s file by registration status on the hub shows every code with the FAA’s meaning of it, from the FAA’s layout document for the file. A code that document does not list is printed with no meaning, and an aircraft with no status code is a row of its own. A status is the FAA’s record of the registration and does not say whether an aircraft is flying.

The snapshot date

The date on these pages, October 23, 2026, is derived and not the FAA’s: it is the newest “last action” date among the registry’s rows. The three files in the download are dated October 23, 2026. A registration the FAA changed after the file was cut is not in it.

How the reference tables are joined

An aircraft names its model by a code, and the model table gives that code its model details. The model table has 94,143 models. Of the aircraft the file lists, whatever their status, the number that name a model code with no row in the table is left out by the Factbook. Engines join the same way: the engine table has 4,752 engine models. Of the aircraft, the number that have an engine code that matches none is left out by the Factbook, and 40,374 have no engine code, which is not a failed match.

The Factbook leaves out a count under 11, so it is not printed on these pages: its cell reads “Left out by the Factbook”. The Factbook leaves out a count of 11 or more too where the printed counts and totals could give a count under 11 back, and a row it leaves out has no rank.

What a state is

The state is the state of the registrant’s address, as the FAA prints it. It is not where an aircraft is kept, based or flown: a company may register an aircraft at its headquarters and keep it elsewhere. A count by state is a count and not a rate, because the registry carries no population or other total it is a share of.

The FAA prints 58 different states and areas. The 50 states and the District of Columbia have pages. The other 7 are territories and military mail codes, named by the Postal Service’s name for each and with no page: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Armed Forces Europe (military mail), Armed Forces Pacific (military mail) and American Samoa. Of the registered aircraft, 4,343 print no state; they are counted apart and are in no state’s count or rank.

What is counted apart

A registered aircraft whose registrant type is blank, or whose year of manufacture is blank or printed as 0000, is counted on its own line and is never added to a type or a year. A blank is not a zero, and it is not a guess: the registry does not say. A year of manufacture is the year the registry prints, not an age.

People

These pages print no registrant’s name, no N-number, and no street, city or ZIP code. A registrant is counted by the FAA’s registrant type (an individual, a partnership, a corporation, and so on), which is the FAA’s own label for who is registered and says nothing about what an aircraft is used for. A person who registers an aircraft is a person in a public file, and these pages report counts and not people.

The check against an independent value

The first question for every figure here is what independently produced value it is checked against. Today there is none. The tables are checked against each other before the Factbook leaves out any count: the counts by state, by registrant type and by year each sum to the 312,570 registered aircraft, and the counts by status to every aircraft the file lists. A row the Factbook leaves out prints no count, so the rows a table prints do not add up to its total. The tables are made from the same file, so their agreement shows the queries are consistent and not that the file is right. The hub’s tests recompute each figure from the FAA’s files by code that shares only the files with the queries. The FAA’s registry page is the authority for any one aircraft.

The license, and the FAA as the source

The registry is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. §105). Every page names the FAA as the publisher in text. None carries an FAA or Department of Transportation logo or seal, or claims to be official. Sums, ranks and shares are this site’s, computed from the FAA’s data, and each links the query that made it.

What this data cannot show

• The state is the state of the registrant's address, never where an aircraft is kept or flown: an aircraft registered to a company in one state may be based in another.
• The registry records registration, not use, hours, flights or airworthiness, and these pages count registered aircraft, those with FAA status code V, T or M; they do not say why a state has more or fewer.
• A registrant’s name is not printed for an individual, a partnership or a co-owned aircraft, and no street address is printed for anyone.

Sources

• Releasable Aircraft Database — Federal Aviation Administration, Aircraft Registry · Public domain — U.S. Government work · Updated: Monthly