Comments on: How do you lookup airplane tail numbers?

Question: How do you lookup airplane tail numbers?

philad — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:26:43 -0800

Does anyone know of a way to lookup a tail number on a private airplane to see who owns it? Nothing nefarious going on here, honest. I believe we have the tail number and are trying to find out who owns the plane.

By: me & my monkey

me & my monkey — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:33:27 -0800

I think you're looking for this.

By: TeamBilly

TeamBilly — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:33:57 -0800

FAA Aircraft Registry

By: philad

philad — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:36:42 -0800

Never underestimate askmefi! Thanks people.

By: KRS

KRS — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:37:03 -0800

You can also put it into Google.

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:20:57 -0800

Related -- this WSJ article from earlier this week is interesting -- 65,000 Airplanes Tracked Globally -- Frenchman's Hobby Grows Into Authoritative Registry.

By: SneakyPete

SneakyPete — Wed, 02 May 2007 16:14:38 -0800

And here's the site if you need the UK database:

CAA UK G-INFO Database

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:27:48 -0800

And for Canada: Canadian Civil Aircraft Register.

By: philad

philad — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:58:25 -0800

Oops! Turns out we have a name of the owner of the plane but not the tail number. Out of luck?

By: TeamBilly

TeamBilly — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:49:26 -0800

Can you give us some context here? What, exactly, do you want to know about the plane?

By: philad

philad — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:33:42 -0800

Context: My wife is planning a conference where big whigs are flying in on their private jets. They tend to be a secretive bunch I guess and aren't telling her exactly when they're arriving. This is making it hard to arrange transportation for them once they get to the airport, so we were hoping there was a way to link their name to their plane so we can figure out when they're coming in. After thinking about my question in a little more detail I'm realizing that looking up a name and trying to find out which jet they own is probably not possible for privacy reasons.

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 03 May 2007 18:59:02 -0800

Even the privacy reasons don't matter -- Bob Famousguy's jet isn't usually owned by Bob Famousguy, it's owned by a holding company, or a leasing company. And some of them will be subscribed to jet timeshares, where they'll be flying in on one of the dozen jets in the fleet. And some companies will have a half-dozen jets in the first place, and so on.

Even then, the amount of notice a tail number is going to give you isn't more than the amount of notice the bigwig walking across the tarmac is going to give you. Maybe an extra five, ten minutes.