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Aviation glossary

MSN

Manufacturer Serial Number · Also: manufacturer serial number, serial number, construction number, c/n

Registration and rules

Serial number assigned by the manufacturer to each aircraft which, unlike the registration, stays with it unchanged for its entire life.

What it is

The manufacturer allocates the MSN before the aircraft leaves the factory, sometimes as early as the signing of the order, and it appears on the manufacturer's data plate and throughout its paperwork. An aircraft may change owner, country or registration many times, but its serial number stays the same, which makes it the most reliable reference for tracing the history of an individual airframe through its successive operators.

The number is only unique within a manufacturer's or a type's own sequence: an Airbus and a Boeing, or two different models from the same maker, can share the same MSN. Identifying an aircraft without ambiguity therefore means pairing the serial with the manufacturer and type. Older records often call it the construction number, abbreviated c/n.

On Vuelopedia

A Vuelopedia aircraft record shows the aircraft's serial number (MSN), which stays the same whenever the registration changes.

Related terms

RegistrationCombination of letters and numbers that identifies an aircraft with the state in which it is registered and must be painted on its exterior. Line numberNumber showing the order in which an aircraft left its type's assembly line; a convention used mainly by Boeing alongside the serial number. ICAO aircraft type designatorCode of up to four characters that ICAO assigns to each aircraft type for use in flight plans and air traffic control, such as A320 or B738. Aircraft registerOfficial record kept by each state of the aircraft entered on it, listing their registration, type, serial number and owner.
Whole glossary

Cite

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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). MSN. Retrieved October 16, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn

MLA

“MSN.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “MSN.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) MSN. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn (Accessed: 16 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_msn,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{MSN}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-16},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-16}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/msn |title=MSN |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-16 |language=en}}

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