An aircraft registration is a code unique to a single aircraft, required by international convention to be marked on the exterior of every civil aircraft. The registration indicates the aircraft's country of registration, and functions much like an automobile license plate. This code must also appear in its Certificate of Registration, issued by the relevant National Aviation Authority (NAA). An aircraft can only have one registration, in one jurisdiction, though it is changeable over the life of the aircraft.
Serial Number Name. N-number Availability. Request A Reserved N-Number. Online In Writing. Reserved N-Number Renewal. N-Number Format. FAA: Yes, You Can Serialize and Mark That Part January 16, 2013 A maintenance provider can restore or assign and add a serial number to a part received with that information missing or illegible, and it can assign and add a serial number to a part not originally serialized, the FAA told ARSA.
- 4Country-specific usage
Legal provisions[edit]
In accordance with the Convention on International Civil Aviation (also known as the Chicago Convention), all civil aircraft must be registered with a national aviation authority (NAA) using procedures set by each country. Every country, even those not party to the Chicago Convention, has an NAA whose functions include the registration of civil aircraft. An aircraft can only be registered once, in one jurisdiction, at a time. The NAA allocates a unique alphanumeric string to identify the aircraft, which also indicates the nationality (i.e., country of registration[1]) of the aircraft, and provides a legal document called a Certificate of Registration, one of the documents which must be carried when the aircraft is in operation.[2]
The registration identifier must be displayed prominently on the aircraft.[3] Most countries also require the registration identifier to be imprinted on a permanent fireproof plate mounted on the fuselage in case of a post-fire/post-crash aircraft accident investigation.
Most nations' military aircraft typically use tail codes and serial numbers.[4] Military aircraft most often are not assigned civil registration codes. However, government-owned non-military civil aircraft (for example, aircraft of the United States Department of Homeland Security) are assigned civil registrations.
Although each aircraft registration identifier is unique, some countries allow it to be re-used when the aircraft has been sold, destroyed or retired. For example, N3794N is assigned to a Mooney M20F.[5] It had been previously assigned to a Beechcraft Bonanza (specifically, the aircraft in which Buddy Holly was killed). Also note that an individual aircraft may be assigned different registrations during its existence. This can be because the aircraft changes ownership, jurisdiction of registration, or in some cases for vanity reasons.
Choice of aircraft registry[edit]
Most often, aircraft are registered in the jurisdiction in which the carrier is resident or based, and may enjoy preferential rights or privileges as a flag carrier for international operations.
Carriers in emerging markets may be required to register aircraft in an offshore jurisdiction where they are leased or purchased but financed by banks in major onshore financial centres. The financing institution may be reluctant to allow the aircraft to be registered in the carrier's home country (either because it does not have sufficient regulation governing civil aviation, or because it feels the courts in that country would not cooperate fully if it needed to enforce any security interest over the aircraft), and the carrier is reluctant to have the aircraft registered in the financier's jurisdiction (often the United States or the United Kingdom) either because of personal or political reasons, or because they fear spurious lawsuits and potential arrest of the aircraft.
International standards[edit]
The first use of aircraft registrations was based on the radio callsigns allocated at the London International Radiotelegraphic Conference in 1913. The format was a single letter prefix followed by four other letters (like A-BCDE).[6] The major nations operating aircraft were allocated a single letter prefix. Smaller countries had to share a single letter prefix, but were allocated exclusive use of the first letter of the suffix.[6] This was modified by agreement by the International Bureau at Berne and published on April 23, 1913. Although initial allocations were not specifically for aircraft but for any radio user, the International Air Navigation Convention held in Paris in 1919 (Paris Convention of 1919) made allocations specifically for aircraft registrations, based on the 1913 callsign list. The agreement stipulated that the nationality marks were to be followed by a hyphen then a group of four letters that must include a vowel (and for the convention Y was considered to be a vowel). This system operated until the adoption of the revised system in 1928.
The International Radiotelegraph Convention at Washington in 1927 revised the list of markings. These were adopted from 1928 and are the basis of the currently used registrations. The markings have been amended and added to over the years, and the allocations and standards have since 1947 been managed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Article 20 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention), signed in 1944, requires that all aircraft engaged in international air navigation bears its appropriate nationality and registration marks. Upon registration, the aircraft receives its unique 'registration', which must be displayed prominently on the aircraft.
Annex 7 to the Chicago Convention describes the definitions, location, and measurement of nationality and registration marks. The aircraft registration is made up of a prefix selected from the country's callsign prefix allocated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (making the registration a quick way of determining the country of origin) and the registration suffix. Depending on the country of registration, this suffix is a numeric or alphanumeric code, and consists of one to five characters. A supplement to Annex 7 provides an updated list of approved nationality and common marks used by various countries.
Country-specific usage[edit]
Faa Serial Number Search
While the Chicago convention sets out the country-specific prefixes used in registration marks, and makes provision for the ways they are used in international civil aviation and displayed on aircraft, individual countries also make further provision for their formats and the use of registration marks for intranational flight.
When painted on the aircraft's fuselage, the prefix and suffix are usually separated by a dash (for example, YR-BMA). When entered in a flight plan, the dash is omitted (for example, YRBMA). In some countries that use a number suffix rather than letters, like the United States (N), South Korea (HL), and Japan (JA), the prefix and suffix are connected without a dash. Aircraft flying privately usually use their registration as their radio callsign, but many aircraft flying in commercial operations (especially charter, cargo, and airlines) use the ICAO airline designator or a company callsign.
Some countries will permit an aircraft that will not be flown into the airspace of another country to display the registration with the country prefix omitted - for example, gliders registered in Australia commonly display only the three-letter unique mark, without the 'VH-' national prefix.
Some countries also operate a separate registry system, or use a separate group of unique marks, for gliders, ultralights, and/or other less-common types of aircraft. For example, Germany and Switzerland both use lettered suffixes (in the form D-xxxx and HB-xxx respectively) for most forms of flight-craft but numbers (D-nnnn and HB-nnn) for unpowered gliders. Many other nations register gliders in subgroups beginning with the letter G, such as Norway with LN-Gxx and New Zealand with ZK-Gxx.
United States[edit]
In the United States, the registration number is commonly referred to as an 'N' number, because all aircraft registered there have a number starting with the letter N. An alphanumeric system is used because of the large numbers of aircraft registered in the United States. An N-number begins with a run of one or more numeric digits, may end with one or two alphabetic letters, may only consist of one to five characters in total, and must start with a digit other than zero. In addition, N-numbers may not contain the letters I or O, due to their similarities with the numerals 1 and 0.[7]
Each alphabetic letter in the suffix can have one of 24 discrete values, while each numeric digit can be one of 10, except the first, which can take on only one of nine values. This yields a total of 915,399 possible registration numbers in the namespace, though certain combinations are reserved either for government use or for other special purposes.[7] With so many possible calls, radio shortcuts are used. Normally when flying entirely within the United States, an aircraft would not identify itself starting with 'N', since that is assumed. Also, after initial contact is made with an aircraft control site, only the last two or three characters are typically used.
The following are the combinations that could be used:
- N1 to N9 — Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) internal use only[7]
- N10 to N99 — Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) internal use only[7]
- N100 to N999
- N1000 to N9999
- N10000 to N99999
- N1A to N9Z
- N10A to N99Z
- N100A to N999Z
- N1000A to N9999Z
- N1AA to N9ZZ
- N10AA to N99ZZ
- N100AA to N999ZZ
An older aircraft (registered before 31 December 1948) may have a second letter in its identifier, identifying the category of aircraft. This additional letter is not actually part of the aircraft identification (e.g. NC12345 is the same registration as N12345). Aircraft category letters have not been included on any registration numbers issued since 1 January 1949, but they still appear on antique aircraft for authenticity purposes. The categories were:
- C = airline, commercial and private
- G = glider
- L = limited
- R = restricted (such as cropdusters and racing aircraft)[8]
- S = state
- X = experimental
For example, N-X-211, the Ryan NYP aircraft flown by Charles Lindbergh as the Spirit of St. Louis, was registered in the experimental category.
There is a unique overlap in the United States with aircraft having a single number followed by two letters and radio call signs issued by the Federal Communications Commission to Amateur Radio operators holding the Amateur Extra class license. For example, N4YZ is, on the one hand, a Cessna 206 registered to a private individual in California, while N4YZ is also issued to an Amateur Radio operator in North Carolina.
Decolonisation and independence[edit]
The impact of decolonisation and independence on aircraft registration schemes has varied from place to place. Most countries, upon independence, have had a new allocation granted – in most cases this is from the new country's new ITU allocation, but neither is it uncommon for the new country to be allocated a subset of their former colonial power's allocation. For example, after partition in 1947, India retained the VT designation it had received as part of the British Empire's Vx series allocation, while Pakistan adopted the AP designation from the newly allocated ITU callsigns APA-ASZ.
When this happens it is usually the case that aircraft will be re-registered into the new series retaining as much of the suffix as is possible. For example, when in 1929 the British Dominions at the time established their own aircraft registers, marks were reallocated as follows:
- Canada: G-Cxxx to CF-xxx, then expanded to C-Fxxx, C-Gxxx, and C-Ixxx in 1974)
- Australia: G-AUxx to VH-Uxx, then immediately expanded to all VH-xxx marks.
- New Zealand: G-NZxx to ZK-Zxx, then immediately expanded to all ZK-xxx marks.
- Newfoundland: G-Cxxx (with Canada) to VO-xxx, then re-merged with the Canadian register in 1949 to CF-xxx.
- South Africa: G-UAxx to ZU-Axx, then expanded to all ZU-xxx marks, then again to current ZS-xxx, ZT-Rxx, and ZU-xxx allocations.
Two oddities created by this reallocation process are the current formats used by the Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Macau, both of which were returned to PRC control from Britain in 1997 and Portugal in 1999 respectively. Hong Kong's prefix of VR-H and Macau's of CS-M, both subdivisions of their colonial powers' allocations, were replaced by China's B- prefix without the registration mark being extended, leaving aircraft from both SARs with registration marks of only four characters, as opposed to the norm of five.
Registration prefixes and patterns by countries[edit]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Article 17 of the Chicago Convention
- ^Article 29 of the Chicago Convention
- ^Article 20 of the Chicago Convention
- ^'US Air Force Tail Codes'. Aerospaceweb.org. Retrieved 4 December 2015.
- ^'N3794N'. Registry.faa.gov. Archived from the original on 2012-02-17. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
- ^ ab'Complete Civil Registers:1 Belgium'. Air-Britain Archive. 1980 (1): 11. 1980. ISSN0262-4923.
- ^ abcd'Forming an N-Number'. Faa.gov. 2015-03-19. Retrieved 2016-09-14.
- ^Sean Elliott (March 2015). 'What does restricted category have to do with experimental'. Sport Aviation: 11.
External links[edit]
Faa Registry Serial Number
- International Registry of Mobile Assets, pursuant to the Cape Town Treaty
United Kingdom military aircraft serial numbers are aircraft registration numbers used to identify individual military aircraft in the United Kingdom (UK). All UK military aircraft are allocated and display a unique registration number. A unified registration number system, maintained initially by the Air Ministry (AM), and its successor the Ministry of Defence (MoD), is used for aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF), Fleet Air Arm (FAA), and Army Air Corps (AAC). Military aircraft operated by government agencies and civilian contractors (for example QinetiQ) are also assigned registration numbers from this system.
When the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was formed in 1912, its aircraft were identified by a letter/number system related to the manufacturer. The prefix 'A' was allocated to balloons of No.1 Company, Air Battalion, Royal Engineers, the prefix 'B' to aeroplanes of No.2 Company, and the prefix 'F' to aeroplanes of the Central Flying School.[1] The Naval Wing used the prefix 'H' for seaplanes ('Hydroaeroplanes' as they were then known), 'M' for monoplanes, and 'T' for aeroplanes with engines mounted in tractor configuration.[1] Before the end of the first year, a unified aircraft registration number system was introduced for both Army and Naval aircraft.
The registration numbers are allocated at the time the contract for supply is placed with the aircraft manufacturer or supplier.
In an RAF or FAA pilot's personal service log book, the registration number of any aircraft flown, along with any other particulars, such as aircraft type, flight duration, purpose of flight, etc., is entered by the pilot after every flight, thus giving a complete record of the pilot's flying activities and which individual aircraft have been flown.
1 to 10000[edit]
This first series ran from 1 to 10000 with blocks allocated to each service. The first registration number was allocated to a Short S.34 for the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), with the number 10000 going to a Blackburn-built B.E.2c aircraft in 1916.[2]
A1 to Z9999[edit]
By 1916, the first sequence had reached 10000, and it was decided to start an alpha-numeric system from A1 (allocated to a Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2d) to A9999 then starting again at B1. The letters A, B, C, D, E, F, H, and J were allocated to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and N1 to N9999 and S1 to S9999 to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). When the sequence reached the prefix K it was decided to start at K1000 for all subsequent letters instead of K1.
Although the N and S series had earlier been used by RNAS aircraft, the sequence N1000 to N9999 was again used by the Air Ministry for both RAF and RN aircraft. The 'Naval' S sequence had reached only S1865, a Fairey IIIF, but when R9999 was reached in 1939, the next serial allocations did not run on from that point, but instead commenced at T1000.
From 1937, not all aircraft registration numbers were allocated, in order to hide the true number of aircraft in production and service. Gaps in the serial number sequence were sometimes referred to as 'blackout blocks'.[3] The first example of this practice was an early 1937 order for 200 Avro Manchester bombers which were allotted the serials L7276-7325, L7373-7402, L7415-7434, L7453-7497, L7515-7549 and L7565-7584, covering a range of 309 possible serial numbers, and thus making it difficult for an enemy to estimate true British military aircraft strength.
AA100 to ZZ999[edit]
By 1940, the registration number Z9978 had been allocated to a Bristol Blenheim, and it was decided to restart the sequence with a two-letter prefix, starting at AA100. This sequence is still in use today. Until the 1990s this two-letter, three-numeral registration number sequence, had numbers in the range 100 to 999. An exception to this rule was Douglas Skyraider AEW1 which received the UK serial WT097, which incorporated the last three digits of its US NavyBureau Number 124097. Recently, past unassigned registration numbers, including those having numerals 001-099, have been assigned.
Some letters have not been used to avoid confusion: C confusion with G, I confusion with 1, O and Q confusion with 0, U confusion with V and Y confusion with X.
During the Second World War, RAF aircraft carrying secret equipment, or that were in themselves secret, such as certain military prototypes, had a '/G' suffix added to the end of the registration number, the 'G' signifying 'Guard', denoting that the aircraft was to have an armed guard at all times while on the ground, for example; W4041/G, the prototype Gloster E.28/39 jet powered by the Whittle engine, LZ548/G, the prototype de Havilland Vampire jet fighter, or ML926/G, a de Havilland Mosquito XVI experimentally fitted with H2S radar.
As of 2009, registration number allocations have reached the ZKnnn range. However since about the year 2000 registration numbers have increasingly been allocated out-of-sequence. For example, the first RAF C-17 Globemaster was given the registration number ZZ171 in 2001, and a batch of Britten-Norman Defenders for the Army Air Corps (AAC) were given registration numbers in the ZGnnn range in 2003 (the last ZG serial being allocated more than 14 years previously). Also, some recent registration number allocations have had a numeric part in the previously-unused 001 to 099 range.
'Maintenance' registration numbers[edit]
Distinct registration numbering systems are used to identify non-flying airframes used for ground training. The RAF have used a numeric sequence with an 'M' suffix sometimes referred to as the 'Maintenance' series.[3] Known allocations, made between 1921 and 2000, ranged from 540M to 9344M, when this sequence was terminated. The main series of single letter serials did not use 'M' to avoid confusion with the suffix 'M'. The Fleet Air Arm use an 'A'-prefixed sequence (e.g. A2606), and the Army Air Corps issue 'TAD' numbers to their instructional airframes (e.g. TAD015).
Display[edit]
The registration numbers are normally carried in up to four places on each aircraft; on either side of the aircraft on a vertical surface, and on the underside of each wing. The under-wing registration numbers, originally specified so that in case of unauthorised low flying civilian personnel could report the offending aircraft to the local police, have not been displayed since the 1960s, as by then jet aircraft speeds at low level had made the likelihood of a person on the ground being able to read, and thus report them, increasingly remote. The registration number on each side is usually on the rear fuselage, but this can vary depending on the aircraft type, for instance the delta winged Gloster Javelin had the registration number on the forward engine nacelle, and the Avro Vulcan had the registration number on its tail fin. Helicopters have only carried registration numbers on each side, either on the tail-boom or rear fuselage.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Kumpulan Serial Number
- ^ abBruce 1956, p.922
- ^Bruce, J. M. (16 April 1954). 'The B.E.2 Series (Part II)'. Flight. p. 482. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
- ^ abUK Serials Resource Centre: Serials Overview
- British Military Aircraft and Markings Second Edition, British Aviation Research Group, 1983, ISBN0-906339-04-9
- 'The Short Seaplanes:Historical Military Aircraft No. 14 Part I', J. M. Bruce, Flight, 14 December 1956. pp. 921–926.
- Royal Air Force Aircraft L1000-N9999, J.J.Halley, Air-Britain, 1993, ISBN0-85130-208-4 and other similar volumes covering all serial allocations from J1000 to XZ999.
- Aircraft Markings of the World 1912-1967, Bruce Robertson, Harleyford Publications, 1967.
- British Military Aircraft Serials 1912-1969, Bruce Robertson, Ian Allan, 1969, SBN 7110-0091-3
External links[edit]
Faa Serial Number Lookup
- UK Serials Resource Centre — UK Military Aircraft Serial Allocations
- 'British Military Serial Numbers' — a 1955 Flight article
- RAF Aircraft Serial Numbers — query-able database from RAFCommands.com