Got a Story in the Data?

Stories waiting to be told

Every story on this site started with a simple question pointed at the FAA registry. A few we'd love help answering:

• Which trainers are aging out of the fleet, and what's replacing them?
• Where do the warbirds actually live?
• What really happened to light sport?
• Your type club's fleet: every Tri-Pacer, Mooney, or Luscombe in America
• Which states are gaining aircraft, and which are quietly losing them?

If you've got a different question, even better. The best stories come from people who already know their corner of aviation.

The data is already public

No special access required. Everything this site runs on is downloadable right now:

• The prepared registry dataset (Parquet, ~6.5 MB): every Class 1 light aircraft with manufacturer, model, year, state, engine, seats, and amateur-built flags. Opens in Python, R, DuckDB, or anything that reads Parquet.
• The interactive explorer: filter and export slices without writing any code.
• Registry updates: tracked changes between snapshots, period by period.

Source: the FAA Releasable Aircraft Database (public domain), refreshed via BetterPlane's registry sync. Spreadsheet analysis is welcome; so is a Jupyter notebook. Use whatever you think in.

How it works

1. Pitch the question. Two or three sentences: what you want to find out and why it's interesting. No polished analysis required to start.
2. Dig in together. You explore the data your way; we help with anything the registry makes confusing (it makes plenty confusing).
3. We build the page. Your findings and prose, our charts and editing, the site's design. No coding involved on your end.
4. You get the byline. Published under your name, shared with the aviation community, permanent home on the site.