About PlanePassion

PlanePassion counts aircraft from official records and says plainly what each count can and cannot show.

Where the numbers come from

• FAA Releasable Aircraft Registry. Every aircraft with an active US registration, with model, serial number, year of manufacture, airworthiness classification, registrant type and state. Updated daily by the FAA; we use dated snapshots and state the date on each page.
• NTSB aviation accident database. Accidents and incidents investigated in the United States since 1982.
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Production figures and history for individual types, and open-access photographs.

How types are counted

Each type is matched by manufacturer and model name in the registry, then checked by hand against the list of matched model names. Duplicate model and serial pairs are counted once. Owners are never published; only totals by type, state and registrant category appear.

What the counts do not show

• A registration is not an airworthy aircraft. The register includes aircraft under restoration, in storage and on display.
• Aircraft registered outside the United States are not in the data.
• The NTSB database has no flight hours, so counts of accidents are not accident rates.

Independence

PlanePassion is not affiliated with or endorsed by the FAA, the NTSB or the Smithsonian Institution. Figures are our own counts of their public records.