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Aviation glossary

Registration

Also: registration marks, tail number, aircraft registration

Registration and rules

Combination of letters and numbers that identifies an aircraft with the state in which it is registered and must be painted on its exterior.

What it is

A registration is issued by the civil aviation authority of the state of registry and consists of a nationality prefix followed by the aircraft's own marks. G-ABCD would be a British format; N123AB an American one, written without a hyphen. ICAO Annex 7 governs how and where the marks are displayed: usually on the rear fuselage or tail and, in many countries, under the wing as well.

Unlike the serial number, a registration is not permanent. An aircraft is re-registered when it moves to another country, and sometimes within the same one, and a released registration can be reissued years later to a different aircraft. A registration therefore identifies an aircraft at a given moment rather than across its whole life. In North America it is often simply called the tail number.

On Vuelopedia

A Vuelopedia aircraft record shows the current registration and all previous ones, and an aircraft can be found by searching for any of them.

Related terms

Nationality prefixOpening letters or digits of a registration that show the country in which an aircraft is registered, such as G for the United Kingdom or N for the United States. MSNSerial number assigned by the manufacturer to each aircraft which, unlike the registration, stays with it unchanged for its entire life. Re-registrationChange of an aircraft's registration, common when it moves to another country or operator; its serial number, by contrast, never changes. Aircraft registerOfficial record kept by each state of the aircraft entered on it, listing their registration, type, serial number and owner. ICAO 24-bit addressUnique 24-bit code, written as six hexadecimal characters, that electronically identifies an aircraft in the signals transmitted by its transponder.
Whole glossary

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

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

MLA

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

Chicago

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

Harvard

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

BibTeX

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

Wikipedia

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

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