Everything connects
An aircraft has a model, a maker, an engine, an owner and a home town; the town has airports; the airports have accidents, and the accidents have aircraft. This site treats those records as one connected graph. Every page that stands for one thing carries a Connections card listing its neighbours by type, and the same connections are available as data for programs and AI assistants.
The map every kind of record on the site, and how they connect · click any box to open it
Two hubs carry the graph: every aircraft and every airport. Around the aircraft: its maker, model family, engine, owner and the certificate layer (who holds the design, the FAA's orders, approved modifications, equipment approvals, failure reports sorted into fourteen aircraft systems, what it is built of). Between the hubs: accidents, live positions and flights, towns and states. Around the airport: its weather now and, when built, the repair stations, operators and schools on the field and the routes between airports. The numbers are from this morning's build.
How the records link
| From | Link | To |
|---|---|---|
| aircraft | is a | model |
| aircraft | made by | maker |
| aircraft | powered by | engine |
| aircraft | owned by | fleet |
| aircraft | registered in | state |
| aircraft | registered in the town of | airport |
| aircraft | involved in | accident |
| model | made by | maker |
| model | powered by | engine |
| engine | made by | engine maker |
| fleet | based in | state |
| airport | in | state |
| accident | at or near | airport |
| accident | in | state |
| accident | involved | model |
| directive | applies to | model |
| directive | applies to | engine |
| directive | about | system |
| certificate | covers | model |
| certificate | covers | engine |
| modification | approved for | model |
| model | built of | material |
| accident | named | system |
| aircraft | flies for | operator |
| operator | lists on its certificate | aircraft |
| operator | is the owner organisation | fleet |
| operator | based in | airport |
| operator | based in | state |
| operator | flies | model |
| repair-station | works in the town of | airport |
| repair-station | in | state |
| engine | burns | fuel |
| engine | also approved for | fuel |
| modification | approves | fuel |
| modification | approves, for | model |
| airport | sells | fuel |
| plant | makes | fuel |
| model | burns | fuel |
| aircraft | burns | fuel |
As data
Every page has a data twin at /graph/<type>/<id>.json, for example /graph/aircraft/N541JA.json, /graph/airport/SBA.json or /graph/model/cessna/172.json. It carries the same groups as the page's Connections card: the neighbour's name, its address, a count and a short note. A description of the whole graph is at /graph/index.json.
The whole graph, rebuilt every morning after the FAA update, compressed:
The nodes file lists every record with its type, name and address; the links file lists every connection as from, link, to. Owners appear only when they are an organisation. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, credit "FAA and NTSB data via eFlight Registry".
What is in it, and what is not
The graph is built from public sources: the FAA's aircraft register (every registered aircraft, its model, engine code and owner, refreshed daily), the FAA's airport file (every landing place, every 28 days), the NTSB's accident database (every accident and incident since 1982, weekly), the FAA's failure reports (service difficulty reports, yearly files since 1995) and the FAA's certification records (type certificates, airworthiness directives, approved modifications, special conditions and bulletins). The links are the ones those files state outright: an aircraft's model code, its engine code, the owner's town, the airport nearest an accident, the models an FAA order names. Nothing is inferred, with one exception: what an airframe is built of is a hand-written list for the biggest model families, because the register does not record it.
People are not nodes at this time, the site's current policy. Pilots, mechanics, passengers and individual owners do not appear; owners are shown only when they are a company, a school, a club, a trust or a public body, as the FAA publishes them, and owners who asked the FAA to withhold their details stay withheld. Insurers, lenders' names and maintenance records are not in any public file and are not here.
The component layer connects every model and engine series to the FAA's orders, certificates, approved modifications and failure reports, sorted into fourteen aircraft systems. Next layers, in the order planned: the approved replacement parts and the companies that make them; the repair stations, charter operators and flight schools on the ground at each airport; the routes between airports.