Quote Originally Posted by tspear View Post
not sure how reliable the blog was. But I have read before when no certification code is in the FAA database it means one of three items.
1. The plane has not be granted airworthy status, e.g. Usually still under construction
2. Plane built before certification
3. Plane type certificate and other information lost or no longer readable.

At one point all records were paper and the conversion was not umm, perfect due to the age of some of the paper.
in terms of under construction, the blog said you have to be careful, Beech, Cirrus and Cessna all reserve blocks which are in the master list.
That all sounds reasonable, Tim. I think #1 is a significant reason why homebuilts end up with blanks for certification code. In most of the cases with homebuilts, all the other columns are filled out normally (with the exception of engine types... which actually helps confirm the theory).

The problem is, I don't think there's a consistent process to update the entry after the plane flies. As I've mentioned in other postings, I've got a friend who made the first flight of his RV-6 about 25 years ago. It's *still* listed with a blank for certification. Even worse, it's had two minor crashes (after my friend sold it) so it's counted as two homebuilt accidents without being counted even once toward the total number of homebuilts.

I cross-reference the NTSB accident database with the FAA registration database to confirm the "homebuilts" identified by the NTSB are truly homebuilts. For my 2012 analysis, a quarter of the airplanes (54) didn't have entries in the FAA certification column. And nearly half of those (20) were shown with more than 100 hours aircraft time. One had over 1,000 hours.

On the reverse side, I once noted a homebuilt that crashed on its first flight...yet I tracked its registration back a number of years, with a definitive entry as a EX-AB aircraft (e.g., #1 should have applied, but didn't). The policy just isn't consistent.

There is another code in the registration listings, "Status Code", which gives some additional information, such as that the N-number is reserved, but the airplane is not yet registered. Again, though, it's hard to know how often these are updated.

Ron Wanttaja