Aircraft platforms

This category is for the company that holds the type design of a complete aircraft and builds it. The guides under it sort the same population by what the aircraft is for: airliners, business jets, helicopters and rotorcraft, military and trainer aircraft, turboprops and general aviation aircraft. The boundary is ownership of that type design. A company that alters an aircraft somebody else designed belongs in STC and modification houses, and a company that ships a system into the line belongs in one of the component categories.

Two approvals, not one

Design and production are approved separately, and a buyer should read them separately. The FAA publishes its design approvals and the searches that reach them: type certificates, amended type certificates, supplemental type certificates, parts manufacturer approvals and technical standard order authorisations.¹ Production is its own certificate. Part 21 requires the holder of a production certificate to run a quality system that controls design data and documents, and that controls suppliers, including a process by which suppliers report articles that do not conform.² Ask which certificate covers the aircraft you are buying and what its production limitation record says, because that record, and not a factory address, is the statement of what the holder is permitted to build.

What the buyer is actually choosing

The specification is the negotiation: maximum takeoff weight, engine thrust or power rating, range at your real payload, avionics fit and its approval basis, interior arrangement. Ask which of the items on your list are options already inside the type design and which are changes to it, because the two carry different approval paths and different lead times. Ask for the delivery position in writing, with the escalation formula, the scope of the pre-delivery inspection and what happens to the price when a slot moves. Ask what initial provisioning costs, what training comes with the aircraft, and for how long the manufacturer commits to supporting the type.

Where the record can be checked

Every aircraft on the United States civil register can be looked up by N-number, serial number, make and model, or registered name, and the data is updated each federal working day.⁴ The registry proves registration and identity. It does not prove condition, and it is not a complete ownership history: the FAA runs a procedure under 49 U.S.C. 44114(b) by which private owners can ask for personal information to be withheld from the public site.⁴ Airworthiness directives are the other half of the record. An AD is a legally enforceable rule, issued when the FAA finds an unsafe condition in a product that is likely to exist or develop in others of the same type design.³ Read the AD list for the type before the first meeting. It tells you what the fleet has been through and how quickly the manufacturer's service network answered, and on its own it is not an argument against a purchase.

Questions that sort airframers

Ask who holds the type certificate and who holds the production certificate, and whether they are the same company. Ask which major systems come from suppliers and who owns the approval for each. Ask what the parts availability commitment is, in years, and what it is worth in writing. Ask which of your requested changes are minor, which need an amended type certificate, and which will arrive as somebody else's supplemental type certificate after delivery.

The companies below are listed on public facts, each linked to its source. Read the certificates first, then negotiate the specification.