Every U.S. civil aircraft has one national ownership record, held by the FAA Civil Aviation Registry in Oklahoma City. Security interests — bank loans, mechanic's liens, tax liens — are recorded against the aircraft there. If you buy an aircraft with an unreleased lien on it, the lien travels with the airframe. It becomes your problem.
What actually shows up
The registry's document file for an aircraft holds the recorded instruments: bills of sale, security agreements, lien releases, and the registration paperwork. The common nasty surprises are:
- Unreleased satisfied liens — the loan was paid off years ago but nobody filed the release. Very common, usually fixable, but it must be cleared before a clean transfer.
- Mechanic's liens — an unpaid maintenance bill, filed against the airframe.
- Breaks in the chain of title — a missing or defective bill of sale somewhere back in the history, often from an estate sale.
Pulling the records yourself — free
The FAA makes the aircraft document file available to the public electronically at no cost. You will need an identity-verified login to reach the document images; the FAA gates them behind identity proofing, not behind a paywall.
Start at the FAA Aircraft Registry to confirm the aircraft, its serial number, and the current registered owner. From there the FAA's records portal gives you the scanned documents on file for that aircraft.
This is genuinely public information. Be sceptical of anyone selling you "access" to it.
When to pay for a real title search
Reading the file yourself tells you what is in it. It does not give you a professional's opinion on whether the title is clean, and it does not give you anyone to fall back on if it turns out not to be.
For a purchase of any real size, an aircraft title company will run a formal search — typically a few hundred dollars and a few business days — and will usually pair it with escrow so that funds and the signed bill of sale change hands at the same moment. On a six-figure airplane that is cheap insurance, and it is the step that most buyers should not skip.
A free first pass on this specific tail
The FAA publishes a current document index — a rolling window of roughly the last six months of instruments recorded against each aircraft. Our free tail-number lookup reads it, and tells you whether this airframe currently shows a security agreement (a recorded lien), a bill of sale, or a lien release, along with any accident records matched to it.
That is a screening signal, not a title search, and the difference matters. The index only covers recent filings, so a lien recorded years ago and never released will not appear there. A quiet result means "nothing recorded lately," never "no liens." What it is genuinely good for is the opposite case: if a security agreement shows up against the tail you are about to buy, you have learned something real, for free, in a few seconds, and you can ask about it before you spend money on anything else.
It is also a useful tell that an aircraft is mid-transaction. A fresh bill of sale or a new security agreement on the record usually means the airframe is changing hands right now.
The order that works
- Before you make an offer: confirm registration status, current owner, and accident history. Cheap, fast, and it kills bad deals early.
- Before you wire money: formal title search and escrow through a title company.
The first step is screening. The second step is closing. They are different jobs, and doing the first one does not remove the need for the second.