Tags made from real aircraft skin: how Aviationtags and others are made

A piece of sheet metal barely bigger than a lighter, with an engraved silhouette and a registration. And yet this metal spent years out on a real aircraft. Tags made from real aircraft skin like the Aviationtags from Cologne have become some of the most popular collectibles in the scene. Here you will learn how a retired jet becomes a key tag, what the engraving tells you, what alternatives exist and what to look out for when buying and collecting.

What is an Aviationtag? The short answer

An Aviationtag is a tag punched from the outer skin of a retired aircraft. Every tag carries a laser engraving with the aircraft type, the registration of the donor aircraft and an individual serial number. The paint on the front is original – the color the aircraft wore across continents for years. Because an edition always comes from exactly one aircraft, the quantity is limited, and no tag is exactly like another.

Behind the brand is a Cologne company that had already worked with aircraft parts before: its sister brand bordbar has been turning retired galley trolleys into furniture since 2006. Aviationtag itself started in 2016, by its own account. After ten years the maker speaks of material from more than 150 aircraft processed in Cologne.

From the boneyard to the workshop

It always begins with the end of an aircraft’s life. When an airline retires a jet and no buyer is found, it often ends up in a storage area or directly at a dismantling company. How such places work and where the big ones are is covered in the article on aircraft boneyards.

During dismantling, the valuable components come out first: engines, landing gear, avionics and other parts that keep flying as spares. What remains is the structure – fuselage, wings, tail. A large part of it goes to recycling as single-grade material. Aviationtag describes the principle like this: components such as aluminum, copper, glass or rubber are cleanly separated from each other. What can be processed further is upcycled, the rest is recycled.

This is exactly where the tag makers come in. By its own account, Aviationtag secures the sheet metal parts at airports, at aircraft boneyards and through partners, and documents the origin as it does so. This step is crucial: without clean documentation, the later engraving with the registration would be worthless. After that the material is transported to Cologne.

A well-known example from the field is the upcycling collection from Lufthansa, where Aviationtag says it was one of the first partners: according to Aviationtag it began with the first Airbus A340-600, registration D-AIHO. A good 93 percent of this aircraft was upcycled or recycled, according to the manufacturer.

How a tag is made: the steps

The two best-known makers describe their production in broadly similar terms. From the information given by Aviationtag and MotoArt, this process emerges:

It sounds simple, but it takes a lot of handwork. Aircraft sheet metal is not craft material: the aluminum alloys are designed for strength at low weight, the sheets are curved and in places riddled with rivet holes, doublers or stiffeners. Not every spot on a fuselage is suitable for a clean, flat tag. That also explains why, according to Aviationtag, the material thickness varies between 0.5 and 3 millimeters.

Why every tag looks different

If you lay two tags from the same edition side by side, you often see clear differences. That is not a production flaw but part of the concept. Scratches, unevenness and paint marks from the time on the aircraft are preserved.

• Color: The color comes straight from the livery. If the metal comes from an area with titles or a cheatline, the tag has several colors. With multicolored tags Aviationtag does not guarantee a fixed color ratio.
• Color variants of an edition: Because an aircraft wears different colors on the fuselage, belly and tail, some editions come in several variants. An edition from an Icelandair Boeing 757-200, registration TF-FIU, was listed in about six shades at the time of research, including light and dark green, black, teal and light and dark blue.
• Feel and thickness: Depending on whether the tag comes from a thin fuselage skin or a thicker structural part, it feels different.
• Signs of use: Chipped paint, stone chips, rivet marks. For collectors that is exactly the appeal.

How much paint an aircraft actually carries and how long a paint job lasts is covered in the article What an aircraft paint job costs and weighs. If you are interested in the design side, Livery design explained covers the basics.

What the engraving tells you

The engraving is the part that turns a pretty piece of sheet metal into a collector’s item. Three details are typical:

Detail	What it means	What you can do with it
Aircraft type	Model of the donor aircraft, e.g. Boeing 747-400 or Airbus A340-600	Match the type against your type list
Registration	The registration the aircraft carried last or in a particular phase	Research the aircraft’s history, previous owners and photos
Tag serial number	Individual number of the tag within the edition	Register the tag, prove authenticity and assignment

Important: the tag’s serial number is not the same as the aircraft’s construction number. The aircraft’s construction or serial number (MSN) is assigned by the manufacturer at build and stays the same through all re-registrations. The difference is explained in the article MSN, c/n and line number. With Boeing products, MotoArt sometimes puts the line number in the product name – a nice detail for anyone who follows aircraft by their build list.

The registration, on the other hand, is your key to the aircraft’s history. Many jets have carried several registrations in their lives, for example after a move to another airline or a lessor. How that works is covered under Re-registrations. And how old the aircraft was at retirement you can find out with the guide Finding out an aircraft’s age.

Registration and lost & found

A practical extra with Aviationtag: you can register your tag on the website. You enter your email address, the serial number and the registration. If you lose the tag and an honest finder reports it, it can be matched to you via the serial number. The manufacturer then helps with the return.

For a key tag that sounds almost like overkill. For collectors whose tag comes from a favorite aircraft and is long sold out, it is real protection.

Alternatives: PlaneTags and other upcycling products

Aviationtag is one of the best-known brands in German-speaking countries, but not the only one. The US studio MotoArt says it was founded in 2001 and processes retired aircraft parts; since 2015 it has also offered tags under the name PlaneTags. They are made in Torrance, California, directly east of Los Angeles Airport.

The process at MotoArt resembles the one in Cologne: by its own account, a team tracks down remarkable aircraft worldwide, fuselage sections are cut out by hand, cleaned, polished and sanded, the tags are punched individually into their oval shape, deburred and laser-engraved with type, model, registration and a limited number. Each tag is delivered on a card with a short history of the aircraft. Besides airliners the range includes military and vintage aircraft, helicopters and general aviation aircraft.

Besides the tags, the same idea has produced bigger upcycling products: furniture from trolleys, watches, lamps or wall pieces from fuselage segments. If you would rather collect things that were used on board, the articles on amenity kits and safety cards and airline collectibles have more ideas. Official fan merchandise from the airlines themselves is covered in the guide to airline and airport shops.

Collecting with a system: what to look out for

Many spotters start with one tag and a year later face a pinboard full of sheet metal. A plan helps the collection make sense.

• Buy for the story, not the looks. The best tag is the one you connect with something: your first long-haul flight, a type you especially like to photograph, or a classic like the Boeing 747-400 or the McDonnell Douglas MD-11.
• Pick a collecting theme. By type, by airline, by the registration’s country of origin or by livery. If you collect registrations anyway, the article Collecting registrations offers a suitable system.
• Look closely at sold-out editions. Sold-out editions turn up on the secondhand market. Make sure the engraving, serial number and registration match the known edition, and ask for the proof of purchase.
• Respect the material. The edges are deburred, but aluminum stays aluminum: on a key ring the paint picks up new scratches. If you want to keep the original condition, hang the tag on your camera bag or put it in a frame.
• Keep customs in mind. Orders from outside the EU may incur duties and import taxes – according to Aviationtag, the same applies the other way round to customers outside the EU.

The perfect gift for spotters?

Tags made from aircraft skin are among the gifts that almost always land well with aviation fans: small, affordable compared with camera gear and with a real story. They work best when you make a connection – a tag from the type the recipient flew on vacation, or from an airline they especially like. Many more ideas by budget and spotter type are collected in the guide Gifts for plane spotters.

If you live in the Cologne region, you can combine the tag with a trip: from the Cologne Bonn Airport observation deck you see living aircraft instead of pieces of metal. More about the airport is in the profile Cologne Bonn Airport, spot tips in the guide Plane spotting at Cologne Bonn.

Conclusion

Aviationtags and PlaneTags are upcycling in the best sense: they rescue a small piece of an aircraft from the smelter and turn it into a collectible. The metal mostly comes from the fuselage, is cut, punched, deburred and laser-engraved with type, registration and serial number. The original livery is preserved, which is why every tag is one of a kind. For spotters the real value is in the registration: it connects the tag to a real aircraft’s life that you can trace – and that may already be in your own logbook.