An aircraft registration is a unique alphanumeric Alphanumeric is a combination of alphabetic and numeric , and is used to describe the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits used by much of western society. There are either 36 (single case) or 62 (case-sensitive) alphanumeric characters. The alphanumeric character set consists of the numbers 0 to 9 and letters A to Z string that identifies an aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle which is able to fly by being supported by the air, or in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines, in similar fashion to a licence plate A vehicle registration plate is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing region's database. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, while on an automobile. In accordance with the Convention on International Civil Aviation The Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, established the International Civil Aviation Organization , a specialized agency of the United Nations charged with coordinating and regulating international air travel. The Convention establishes rules of airspace, aircraft registration and safety, and details all aircraft must be registered with a national authority (such as the FAA The Federal Aviation Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S. (National Airworthiness Authority). The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 created the group under the name "Federal Aviation Agency", and adopted its current name or Transport Canada Transport Canada is the department within the government of Canada which is responsible for developing regulations, policies and services of transportation in Canada. It is part of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities portfolio. Transport Canada has its offices in Ottawa, Ontario), and furthermore, they must carry proof of this registration in the form of a legal document called a Certificate of Registration at all times when in operation. Most countries also require the aircraft registration to be imprinted on a permanent fireproof plate mounted on the fuselage The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull. The fuselage also serves to position control and for the purposes of post-fire/post-crash aircraft accident investigation.

Because airplanes A fixed-wing aircraft, typically called an airplane, aeroplane or plane, is an aircraft capable of flight using forward motion that generates lift as the wing moves through the air. Planes include jet engine and propeller driven vehicles propelled forward by thrust, as well as unpowered aircraft . Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from ornithopters typically display their registration numbers on the aft fuselage just forward of the tail, in earlier times more often on the tail itself, the registration is often referred to as the "tail number". In the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language, the registration number is also referred to as an "N-number", as it starts with the letter N.

Although each aircraft registration is unique, some, but not all 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 The Mooney M20 is a family of piston-powered, propeller-driven general aviation aircraft, all featuring a low-wing and tricycle gear, manufactured by the Mooney Airplane Company^[1]. It had been previously assigned to a Beechcraft Bonanza (specifically, the aircraft in which Buddy Holly Charles Hardin Holley known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll. Although his success lasted only a year and a half before his death in an airplane crash, Holly is described by critic Bruce Elder as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll." His works was killed). Also note that an individual aircraft may be assigned different registrations during its existence. This can be because the aircraft changes ownership, state of registration, or in some countries, like the United States, for vanity reasons.

Certificate of Registration

The Certificate of Registration contains contact information used by national authorities for enforcement purposes, and for the purposes of disseminating Airworthiness Directives ADs usually result from service difficulty reporting by operators or from the results of aircraft accident investigations. They are issued either by the national civil aviation authority of the country of aircraft manufacture or of aircraft registration. When ADs are issued by the country of registration they are almost always coordinated with the to aircraft owners. Most national authorities require that the aircraft owner update said contact information immediately or as soon as possible any time there is a change in the same.

for information about registering aircraft ELTs.

International standards

The first use of aircraft registrations was based on the radio callsigns allocated at the London International Radiotelegraphic Conference in 1913. 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 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).

At the International Radiotelegraph Convention at Washington in 1927 the list of markings was revised and adopted from 1928, these allocations are the basis of the currently used registrations. The marking have been amended and added to over the years and the allocations and standard are managed by the International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization , a specialized agency of the United Nations, codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth. Its headquarters are located in the Quartier International of Montreal, Quebec, (ICAO).

Article 20 of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation The Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, established the International Civil Aviation Organization , a specialized agency of the United Nations charged with coordinating and regulating international air travel. The Convention establishes rules of airspace, aircraft registration and safety, and details (signed in 1944) requires that all signatory countries register aircraft over a certain weight with a national aviation authority. Upon registration, the aircraft receives its unique "registration" which must be displayed prominently on the aircraft.

Annex 7 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation 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 The International Telecommunication Union allocates call sign prefixes for radio and television stations of all types. They also form the basis for aircraft registration identifiers. These prefixes are agreed upon internationally, and are a form of country code. A call sign can be any number of letters and numerals but each country must only use allocated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) The International Telecommunication Union is the eldest organization in the UN family still in existence. It was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris on 17 May 1865 and is today the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues, and the global focal point for governments and the private sector (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 digits or characters respectively.

The ICAO provides a supplement to Annex 7 which provides an updated list of approved Nationality and Common Marks used by various countries.

Country-specific usage

When painted on the fuselage, the prefix and suffix are separated by a dash (for example YR-BMA), however when entered in a flight plan Flight plans are documents filed by pilots or a Flight Dispatcher with the local Civil Aviation Authority prior to departure. They generally include basic information such as departure and arrival points, estimated time en route, alternate airports in case of bad weather, type of flight (whether instrument flight rules or visual flight rules),, the dash is omitted (for example YRBMA). In the United States, the prefix and suffix are painted without a dash. Aircraft flying privately usually use their registration as their radio callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations. A call sign can be formally assigned by a government agency, informally adopted by individuals or organizations, or even cryptographically encoded to disguise a station's, but many aircraft flying in commercial operations (especially charter, cargo, and airlines) use the ICAO airline designator This is a list of airline codes. The table lists the IATA airline designators, the ICAO airline designators and the airline call signs . Historical assignments are also included or a company callsign. In some instances, it may be sufficient to simply display the suffix letters, with the country prefix omitted. For example, gliders A glider or sailplane is a type of glider aircraft used in the sport of gliding. Some gliders, known as motor gliders are used for gliding and soaring as well, but have engines which can, in some cases, be used for take-off or for extending a flight. Foot-launched aircraft are described in separate articles, though their differences to sailplanes registered in Australia For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of the roughly 250 language groups. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north and discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Britain in 177 would omit the VH prefix and simply display the suffix. Obviously this is only suitable where the aircraft does not fly in the airspace of another country.

Even if the suffix consists solely of alphabetical characters in a certain country, gliders and ultralights may sometimes use digits instead. For example, in Germany, D-ABCD can be a powered airplane while D-1234 is a glider. In Australia, early glider registration suffixes began with the letter "G", and it is not uncommon to find such gliders only displaying the last two letters of the suffix, as they lacked the range to travel internationally. For example, VH-GIQ would simply be displayed as IQ.

Different countries have different registration schemes: Canadian registrations start with C, British with G, German with D, and so forth. A comprehensive list is tabulated below.

United States

An N-number is an aircraft registration number used in the United States. All aircraft registered there have a number starting with N. An alpha-numeric system is used due to the large numbers of aircraft registered in the United States. An N-number may only consist of one to five characters, must start with a digit other than zero, and cannot end in a run of more than two letters. In addition, N-numbers may not contain the letters I or O, due to their similarities with the numerals 1 and 0.^[2]

Each alphabetic character 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 nine values. This yields a total of 915,399 possible registration numbers in the namespace In general, a namespace is an abstract container providing context for the items it holds and allowing disambiguation of homonym items having the same name (residing in different namespaces), though certain combinations are reserved either for government use or for other special purposes.^[2] 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) The Federal Aviation Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S. (National Airworthiness Authority). The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 created the group under the name "Federal Aviation Agency", and adopted its current name internal use only^[2]
• N1A to N9Z
• N1AA to N9ZZ
• N10 to N99 — Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) The Federal Aviation Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S. (National Airworthiness Authority). The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 created the group under the name "Federal Aviation Agency", and adopted its current name internal use only^[2]
• N10A to N99Z
• N10AA to N99ZZ
• N100 to N999
• N100A to N999Z
• N100AA to N999ZZ
• N1000 to N9999
• N1000A to N9999Z
• N10000 to N99999

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
• S = state
• X = experimental

For example, N-X-211, the Ryan NYP aircraft flown by Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (nicknamed "Slim," "Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle") was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist as the Spirit of St. Louis The Spirit of St. Louis is the custom-built single engine, single seat monoplane that was flown solo by Charles Lindbergh on May 20–21, 1927, on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize, was registered in the experimental category.

Decolonisation and independence

The impact of decolonisation Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent territorial governments over another. It can be understood politically (attaining independence, autonomous home rule, union with the metropole or another state) or culturally (removal of pernicious and independence on aircraft registration schemes has varied from place to place. Most countries on independence have had a new allocation granted taken from either an existing ITU allocation or the former countries ITU allocation. For example after partition in 1947 India Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated here, while Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam retained the VT designation used by the British Raj The British Raj is the name given to the period of British colonial rule in South Asia between 1858 and 1947; it can also refer to the dominion itself, and even the region under the rule. The region, commonly called India in contemporary usage, included areas directly administered by Britain, as well as the princely states ruled by individual, while Pakistan Pakistan (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪsˈtaːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریہ پاکِستان) (also the Federation of Pakistan), is a country in South Asia. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, is bordered by Afghanistan and adopted the AP designation from the newly allocated ITU callsigns APA-ASZ. Hong Kong Hong Kong[note 3] is one of two special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China; the other is Macau. Situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of 1,104 km2 (426 sq mi) and a population of seven, which formerly used the VR-H designation, had the "VR" replaced with the Chinese "B" upon the 1997 Handover to China The transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China, often referred to as the Handover, took place on 1 July 1997. The event marked the end of British rule, and the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong back to Chinese rule, resulting in aircraft designations with only four letters in total (as opposed to the international norm of five letters).

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