An aircraft, system by system
What an aircraft is made of, and what the public record says about each part of it: the failure reports operators and repair shops file with the FAA (674,873 in the last ten years), the FAA's airworthiness directives (20,218 orders on file) and the approved modifications. The industry numbers every aircraft system the same way, in about a hundred chapters; this site folds them into fourteen, plus a branch of its own for electric propulsion.
How to read these pages
A failure report (the FAA calls it a service difficulty report) is filed when an operator or a repair station finds a part that failed or was about to. Airlines, charter operators and repair stations must file; private owners may. So the counts measure reporting as much as reliability: a type flown by airlines shows more reports than a private type with the same problems.
An FAA order (an airworthiness directive) is a rule: it names the models, engines or propellers it covers and what their owners must do, and by when. An approved modification (a supplemental type certificate) is a change the FAA has approved for a design, from a new autopilot to floats; the company holding it may sell it to owners of that design. A type certificate is the design's own approval, naming the models it covers and the company that holds it today.
The NTSB's own findings are sorted into the same systems. Since 2008 the NTSB has published coded findings for 24,571 cases; in 8,167 of them a part or system of the aircraft was named as a cause or factor, in 18,994 the pilot or crew, in 10,302 the weather, terrain or operating environment (a case can name several). Each system page shows its cases, and the accident list can be filtered by the system named.
Every model family page and engine series page on this site now carries a section with the orders, reports, modifications and certificates that name it. Components are known per design, not per aircraft: the FAA records only the engine for each individual aircraft, so an aircraft page inherits the rest from its model and engine.
Sources: FAA Dynamic Regulatory System (type certificate data sheets, airworthiness directives, supplemental type certificates, special conditions, special airworthiness information bulletins, technical standard order authorisations) and the FAA's service difficulty reporting system (yearly files since 1995). Related: every FAA order · type certificates · who holds what · the graph.