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Registered aircraft · FAA record as of October 28, 2026Bell TH-57
N120PL is a Bell TH-57, a rotorcraft with turboshaft engines (a helicopter or multicopter). It has 5 seats. It is registered to State University of Iowa, a government body in Iowa City, Iowa. The registration is valid: it was issued on May 10, 2024 and expires on May 31, 2031. No airworthiness certificate is on file, which is normal for drones and for aircraft still being built or tested.
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Flight history: where it flew in the last seven days · follow it on the live map
Aircraft
- Maker
- Bell
- Model
- TH-57 · all TH-57s and related versions
- Built of
- aluminium with composite partsA mostly aluminium airframe with composite parts where they save weight: control surfaces, fairings, the tail or the rotor blades. This is how the Bell TH-57 family is built; the FAA does not record construction for each aircraft, and the type certificate data sheet is the authority for this one.
- Serial number
- 163341
- Type
- RotorcraftFAA type of aircraft code 6 (the FAA's broad category for the airframe). Every aircraft with this code · All codes
- Power
- TurboshaftFAA type of engine code 3 (what powers it, as the FAA classes engines). Every aircraft with this code · All codes, 1 motor
- Seats
- 5
- Year built
- Not given
- Transponder code
- A05502 (octal 50052402)
Registration
- Status
- Valid registrationFAA registration status code V (whether the registration certificate is in force). Every aircraft with this code · All codes
- Certificate issued
- May 10, 2024
- Expires
- May 31, 2031
- Last FAA action
- May 10, 2024
- Airworthiness
- None on file
- FAA region
- CentralFAA region code 3 (the FAA regional office that handles the record). All codes
- FAA record id
- 01444122
Owner as the FAA publishes it
- Name
- State University of Iowa (university or college with a flight programme: its whole fleet and safety record)
- Type
- GovernmentFAA type of owner code 5 (who holds the registration: a person, a company, a trust or a government body). Every aircraft with this code · All codes
- Address
- Operator Perf Lab Hgr H
1801 S Riverside Dr
Iowa City, IA 52246-5704
Owners can ask the FAA to withhold their name and address from public files. When they do, those fields are blank here as well. How that works.
Documents on file 0
No bills of sale, loans or other documents are indexed against this tail number.
Earlier use of this number 1
Connections how N120PL links to the rest of the register
- Bell TH-57 23 registered
- Bell 3,079 aircraft on the register
- Built of aluminium with composite parts · as the model family is built; the register does not record it per aircraft
- State University of Iowa 4 aircraft registered to this organisation
- Iowa City, IA 102 aircraft registered in this town
- Iowa City Municipal · IOW
- Iowa 4,509 aircraft registered
- Failure reports filed on the Bell TH-57 8 reports since 1995
The whole map of how records connect · these connections as data: /graph/aircraft/N120PL.json.
Records check free · 2 to understand · 3 clear
The public federal record on N120PL, read the way a buyer, lender or insurer reads it: FAA registration, prior tail numbers keyed on the serial number, reuse of the tail number, recent registry filings, and the NTSB accident record under this and every earlier registration.
Valid registration to State University of Iowa, a government body, certificate issued May 10, 2024, expires May 31, 2031. No fractional interest recorded. [1]
No airworthiness certificate is on file. Usual for a newly registered aircraft, a project, or an aircraft that has not flown since a change of registration; ask for the certificate. [1]
No earlier tail number is recorded against serial 163341 for this model in the deregistered file. [2]
N120PL was previously assigned to 1 other aircraft: Long Patrick VANS ACFT RV-4 (serial 656, cancelled August 25, 2008). Histories keyed to the tail number alone can mix aircraft up; this check keys on the serial number. [2]
No bills of sale, loans or releases have reached the registry in recent weeks. The index covers only recent filings; older liens are in the records file. [3]
No NTSB investigation records located under N120PL. CLEAR means the query ran and returned nothing, not that nothing ever happened. [4]
These live in the FAA aircraft records file (every document ever filed against the aircraft) and, for larger aircraft, the International Registry. Part of the full report.
AD compliance against the logbooks and flight-activity reconciliation are researched layers of the full report.
- FAA Releasable Aircraft Database, master file, file of October 28, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- FAA deregistered aircraft file (part of the same download), file of October 28, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- FAA document index: registry documents received in recent weeks, file of October 28, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- NTSB aviation accident database (CAROL), records through September 30, 2026. data.ntsb.gov/carol-main-public/basic-search
This automated check reads the public federal record. Nothing here is a legal opinion, an appraisal or a statement about the aircraft's condition; a CLEAR line is a statement about the searched record, not the aircraft.
Source: FAA Civil Aviation Registry, Releasable Aircraft Database, October 28, 2026. See this record on the FAA site · This record as data