Buying guide

How to check an aircraft before you buy: serial, registration, hours and history

Published November 9, 2026.

1. Start with the serial number

The registration changes when the aircraft changes country or owner. The serial number does not. It identifies the aircraft for its whole life and tells you which variant it really is. With Citations, for example, the serial range separates a Citation II from a Bravo, and a Citation V from an Ultra, as we show in this guide.

A real example: two Slovenian Citation Bravos sold recently reappeared with Serbian and Bulgarian registrations. Only the serial showed they were the same aircraft. Be wary of a listing that does not publish the serial.

2. Check owner and registration in the official register

The aircraft register of the FAA, the US civil aviation authority, is open to anyone. Type the registration (the "N-number") to see serial, model, registered owner, registration status and certificate dates.¹ In Brazil, ANAC's Brazilian Aeronautical Register has a similar public search.⁶ In Europe, each country has its own register, and some are not public.

Two cautions. First, the registered owner may be a company set up only to hold the aircraft, which is common and legal but does not tell you who decides on the sale. Second, not every field is filled in: the FAA register leaves the year of manufacture blank in some cases, and the year shown in a listing may be the year of registration, not of manufacture.

3. Order the registration history

The FAA sells a complete copy of the registration file of every US aircraft, with ownership transfers, changes and filed documents. A copy on CD costs US$10, and it can be ordered online.² It is the cheapest way to see how many hands the aircraft has passed through.

4. Search accidents and incidents

CAROL, the database of the NTSB, the US agency that investigates accidents, can be searched by registration, make and model, free of charge.³ Search the current registration and the previous ones. Keep in mind that the NTSB only records US aircraft and foreign cases it took part in. An aircraft with no record in CAROL is not necessarily an aircraft with no history.

5. Look at the airworthiness directives

Airworthiness directives are mandatory corrections issued by the authority for a model, an engine or a component. The FAA's are in its DRS system, and those of EASA, the European agency, in a dedicated tool.^4,5 The list shows what had to be done; the logbooks and the maintenance report show whether it was done.

6. Hours, cycles and engines

Ask for total airframe hours, cycles (number of takeoffs and landings), hours on each engine since the last overhaul, whether the engines are on a maintenance programme, and the inspection status. On Citations, the manufacturer's maintenance tracking report summarizes much of this.

Read the engine notes carefully. In one listing we tracked, both engines had 20 hours left before overhaul, with a possible 200-hour extension. That weighs heavily on price and rarely appears in the headline.

Traps we have found

All the cases below are real and come from listings we tracked:

• A share listed as a whole aircraft. A "Citation Bravo for US$395,000" was the sale of a 1/4 share, with management and charter revenue.
• Charter listed as a sale. A "Citation Mustang for US$2,900" sat among sale listings, but it was a charter company's hourly rate.
• A listing that stays up after the sale. We have seen an aircraft listed by a broker who said they no longer had it, and a listing that switched to "not for sale" without notice.
• The same aircraft with two brokers. A Citation II appeared on two portals with two different brokers, and only comparing serial and hours showed it was the same aircraft.
• A year that does not match the model. Sometimes the year in a listing is the year of registration in the country, not of manufacture, and the model name comes from an old record. In those cases, the serial decides.

After that: the pre-purchase inspection

This routine is for filtering. The purchase decision depends on a pre-purchase inspection by an independent shop chosen by the buyer, and on a review of the logbooks by someone who knows the model. If you like, we can do this initial screening for you before any offer.

Sources

1. FAA, Aircraft Inquiry, aircraft register search: registry.faa.gov
2. FAA, Request Copies of Aircraft Records: faa.gov
3. NTSB, CAROL aviation investigation database: my.ntsb.gov
4. FAA, Dynamic Regulatory System (airworthiness directives): drs.faa.gov
5. EASA, Safety Publications Tool (airworthiness directives): ad.easa.europa.eu
6. ANAC, Brazilian Aeronautical Register, public search: sistemas.anac.gov.br