Looking up aircraft registries: LBA, Austro Control, BAZL, FAA and G-INFO

At the fence you noted a registration you had never seen before. Was it the rare business jet, a leased aircraft passing through, or just a misread? The most reliable answer comes from the official aircraft registry of the state where the aircraft is registered. The catch: not every country lets you look inside. This guide shows you how to look up aircraft registries – from the closed German Luftfahrzeugrolle through the open registers of Austro Control and the BAZL to the two spotter favorites, the FAA and G-INFO.

Looking up aircraft registries: the short answer

Every civil aircraft is registered in exactly one state, and that state’s registry is the official source for registration, type, serial number and owner. How open these registries are differs greatly: Germany keeps its Luftfahrzeugrolle under lock and key, Austria and Switzerland offer free online lookups, and the US and Great Britain open their registries so far that you can even search by hex code. For your practice that means: first read the prefix, then pick the matching registry – and for D registrations fall back on other sources.

How prefix and registration relate in general is explained in the basics guide Understanding aircraft registrations. Which prefix belongs to which country is in the overview Country codes on aircraft.

The five registries at a glance

Registry	Prefix	Responsible	Free online lookup	Especially useful for spotters
Luftfahrzeugrolle	D-	Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA)	no	Information only for authorities or with a legal interest
Austrian aircraft register	OE-	Aviation authority at Austro Control	yes	Online lookup, monthly supplements, annual full extract
Swiss aircraft register	HB-	Federal Office of Civil Aviation (BAZL)	yes	also covers Liechtenstein
FAA Aircraft Registry	N	Federal Aviation Administration	yes	Hex code for every N-number, complete data download
G-INFO	G-	Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)	yes	Search by hex code, type and owner, also deleted aircraft

Germany: why the Luftfahrzeugrolle is closed

The German Luftfahrzeugrolle (aircraft register) is kept by the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt in Braunschweig. The legal basis is § 64 of the Luftverkehrsgesetz. Under it, the LBA stores the data of all aircraft approved for traffic in Germany: airplanes, rotorcraft, airships, motor gliders, gliders, manned balloons and unmanned aircraft systems subject to registration. Stored data includes, among other things, the kind and type of the aircraft with the airframe serial number, the nationality and registration mark, the sheet number in the register and the owner’s name and address. Ultralight aircraft, by contrast, are listed in the Luftsportgeräteverzeichnis (register of air sports equipment), which commissioned bodies – in practice air sports associations – keep. The system of class letters is explained in the article on German registrations and weight classes, and its development in the history of German aircraft registrations.

The key point for spotters: the LBA itself describes the register as a non-public register that, for data protection reasons, is neither published nor freely accessible. There is no search form like in Vienna or Bern.

Who still gets information

The law provides two routes:

• Public bodies in Germany can receive information in individual cases, for example for administrative proceedings, law enforcement or averting danger.
• Private parties receive details on type, registration and owner only if they credibly show that they need the data to enforce their own rights – for example to assert or enforce a claim – and cannot manage without it. According to the LBA, such information is subject to a fee.

A log entry or curiosity about a rare visitor does not meet these requirements. So please don’t ask the LBA for a register extract for your collection – that is simply not provided for.

How to check D registrations without a register

For practice at the fence you are not blind anyway:

• Read the class letter. The first letter after D- already narrows it down: D-A for large aircraft, D-E for light single-engine aircraft, D-H for helicopters, D-M for ultralights.
• Use flight tracking. Airliners with a transponder appear on flight tracker services with registration, type and hex code. How to find an aircraft specifically is covered in Tracking an aircraft by registration.
• Place the hex code. The 24-bit address is tied to the state of registry. What it reveals is explained in the article on the ICAO 24-bit address.
• Analyze the photo. The data plate, serial number in the landing gear bay or paint scheme help when the registration is blurry. Tips are given in Working out an unreadable registration.

Military aircraft, by the way, are generally not listed in the civil register. Their own system is described in the article Registrations of Bundeswehr aircraft.

Austria: the online lookup from Austro Control

In Austria, the aviation authority at Austro Control keeps the aircraft register. Austro Control is known to many spotters mainly as an air traffic control provider – more in the article Austro Control and Skyguide. The authority assigns OE registrations, registers aircraft, and changes and deletes entries.

For spotters there are three tools:

• Online lookup: On the Austro Control website you can search the register for free.
• Monthly supplements: On the overview page for the register, Austro Control publishes monthly supplements as PDFs. They show which aircraft were newly registered or deleted.
• Full extract: The annual extract lists all registered aircraft, organized by weight and propulsion classes, with registration, manufacturer, type, serial number and maximum takeoff mass.

The monthly supplements in particular are interesting for collectors: anyone who goes through them often discovers new OE registrations before the aircraft even show up at their home airport. How the OE letters and number ranges are structured is explained in the guide to Austrian OE registrations.

Switzerland: the BAZL online aircraft register

The Swiss register is kept by the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (BAZL). On its website it links to an online aircraft register in which you can search for HB registrations. There you find, among other things, the type and category of the registered aircraft.

You may already know one peculiarity: the BAZL also keeps the aircraft register of the Principality of Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein aircraft therefore also carry HB registrations and end up in the same search. You can tell the difference on the aircraft by the Liechtenstein coat of arms, not by the registration.

Another point for collectors: since 2023, because of scarcity, registrations that were deleted more than ten years ago can also be reissued. An HB registration is therefore no longer necessarily unique for life. So always note the type and date with every sighting. More on the letter groups is in the article on Swiss HB registrations.

USA: the open FAA registry

If there is one registry spotters love, it is that of the Federal Aviation Administration. At registry.faa.gov you look up any N-number for free, and you can leave out the leading N. The result shows, among other things:

• registration status and certificate expiration date
• manufacturer, model, year of manufacture and serial number
• type of registration and registered owner
• the Mode S code in hexadecimal and octal notation

You can search not only by number but also by serial number, name, manufacturer and model, engine, dealer or region. According to the FAA, the data is updated at midnight (Central Time) on every US federal working day.

For data fans there is also the complete registry database as a download: a ZIP archive with comma-separated text files, including the registered and deregistered aircraft, type and engine references and reserved numbers. With it you can find, for example, all examples of a rare type registered in the US.

Two pitfalls in the FAA registry

1. Owner is not operator. For leased or financed airline jets, a trust company is often listed as the owner in the register. That is normal and not a mistake. Background is provided by the articles on aircraft leasing and offshore registrations.
2. Not every hex code leads to an owner. With the FAA programs LADD and PIA, owners can have their flight data filtered from public tracking feeds or use an alternative, temporary 24-bit address. If you find nothing for a code, that may be the reason.

The structure and assignment rules of US registrations are explained in the guide US N-numbers.

Great Britain: G-INFO

The British register of the Civil Aviation Authority is called G-INFO and is freely searchable online. The search goes far beyond the registration: you can search, among other things, by serial number, type, owner and the 24-bit address.

One detail makes G-INFO especially valuable: deleted aircraft can be found too. That way you reconstruct the history of an aircraft even when it has long been flying under a different prefix. In addition, the CAA offers explanations of the data fields on the G-INFO page, an overview of the latest registrations and deregistrations and a download of the register.

Note: according to the CAA, the data is updated at the end of every working day, and the result shows the state of the extract. G-INFO is ideal for checking a sighting – anyone who wants to reuse or publish the data should read the CAA’s terms of use first. Everything on personalized registrations and special features is in the article British G registrations.

From registration to verified sighting: step by step

No matter which country – the process is always the same.

Why the serial number is so important shows with re-registrations: when an aircraft changes owner or country, it often gets a new registration but remains the same airframe. How to trace such changes is explained in the article on re-registrations. And how to find out an aircraft’s age via registry and serial number is covered in Finding out an aircraft’s age.

What registries can do – and what they can’t

For paint schemes, operating history and current flights you therefore still need other sources: flight tracking, photos from the community and your own notes. The registry is the anchor to which you fasten everything else.

What to watch out for

• Take data protection seriously. Open registries often show names and addresses for private aircraft. Use them to check, but don’t publish private data in comments or photo descriptions.
• No registry is perfectly up to date. Time can pass between an owner change and the registry entry. If the registry differs from your observation, check both.
• Test and manufacturer registrations are special cases. New aircraft often fly with short-lived registrations that don’t show up in every registry – background in the article on test registrations and manufacturer registrations.
• Drones are a topic of their own. The operator registration of drones with the LBA has little to do with the Luftfahrzeugrolle – see Registering a drone.

If you then want to file your verified sightings neatly, you will find ideas in the comparison Notebook, spreadsheet or app and in the overview Logbook apps for spotters. How to label photos with the registration right away is shown in Labeling photos properly. And if the topic really grabs you, Collecting registrations shows how other spotters turn it into a collecting field of their own.

Conclusion

Aircraft registries are the official truth behind every registration, but they are accessible to very different degrees. The German Luftfahrzeugrolle stays closed for data protection reasons and is open to private individuals only with a legal interest and for a fee. Austro Control and the BAZL offer free online lookups, Austria additionally with monthly supplements and a full extract. The FAA registry and G-INFO go furthest, linking registration, serial number and hex code. Anyone who reads the prefix, picks the matching registry and notes the serial number too has a log that stands up to any recheck.