Aviation numbers
The tail number, and the authority behind it.
A registration is two parts: which State’s register the aircraft sits on, and which airframe it is. The first part is the one a broker checks.
- 216 marksEvery nationality mark notified to ICAO, searchable in the box above.
- D against D2Germany and Angola. The marks are not a fixed length, so the first letter is not enough.
- Register ≠ operatorThe mark names the certifying authority, not necessarily who holds the AOC.
Registers the desk sees most
The marks worth recognising on sight, because each one names the authority you would ask for the operator’s certificate.
What a tail number is made of
Every aircraft in international service carries a registration, and the Chicago Convention requires it to be painted on the airframe. It has two parts.
The nationality mark — the characters before the hyphen. It identifies the State whose register the aircraft is on. TC is Türkiye.
The registration mark — what follows. It identifies that one airframe. Türkiye issues three letters, so a Turkish aircraft reads TC-ABC.
The marks are not a fixed length, which is what trips people up. D is Germany but D2 is Angola. VP-B is Bermuda while VP-C is the Cayman Islands. Reading only the first letter gets the country wrong often enough to matter.
Why a broker cares
The nationality mark tells you which civil aviation authority certified the aircraft and, in almost every case, which authority issued the operator’s air operator certificate. That decides what oversight sits behind the flight, which permits are needed, and who to call if something goes wrong at three in the morning.
It is also the first thing to check against a quotation. An offer naming an aircraft type but no registration is an offer you cannot verify. When Aeroinis quotes a specific aircraft the registration is on the quotation — and you can put it into the box above.
The offshore registers
Business aviation uses a handful of small registers far out of proportion to the size of the places themselves: the Isle of Man (M), Guernsey (2), Malta (9H), San Marino (T7), Bermuda (VP-B) and the Cayman Islands (VP-C). They are legitimate ICAO registers and the reasons owners choose them are ordinary commercial ones — tax treatment, financing structures, the speed and flexibility of the authority.
What they do not do is change the rules that apply in flight. An aircraft on any of these registers still flies to the rules of the airspace it is in, and the desk still asks for the same certificates.
Two that need a second look
- HB covers both Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The two are separated by the national emblem painted alongside the mark, not by the letters.
- N registrations carry no hyphen — N272MM, not N-272MM — and can end in letters, digits, or both. The United States is the only major register that works this way.
What this does not tell you
- The register is not the operator. An aircraft can be registered in one State and operated under an AOC held in another; the desk verifies the AOC separately.
- It proves nothing about the aircraft’s condition, insurance or maintenance status. Those come from documents, not from paint.
- The list is the set of marks States have notified to ICAO. A few States have notified none, and marks are occasionally reassigned.
Nationality marks transcribed from FAA JO 7340.2, Chapter 4 Section 1, which reproduces the marks notified to ICAO under Annex 7, Aircraft Nationality and Registration Marks. Annex 7 also sets where the marks go on the airframe and how large they must be. Registers change; confirm anything operational against the current publication.