How Do I Find the Registration (Tail Number) of My Plane?

What is a registration, and where is it on the plane?

Every civil aircraft is registered in a country and gets a unique mark, much like a license plate. It starts with a nationality prefix followed by letters or digits, for example F-GUGJ. Under international rules, the registration must be displayed prominently on the aircraft. You usually see it on the rear fuselage, near the tail, and on some aircraft under a wing. The hyphen is a writing convention: it is painted for most countries, absent in flight plans, and not used by the United States, Japan or South Korea.

The registration identifies the airframe, while the flight number identifies a service. The same flight number can be operated by different aircraft on different days, and the same aircraft flies many flight numbers. For a longer explanation, read aircraft registration explained.

How do I find the registration of a flight I took?

1. Use a flight tracker. Search your flight number, open the list of past flights, pick your date and read the registration. Flightradar24 states that its free plan shows 7 days of history, and paid plans go further back, so check the current limits and do it soon after the flight. See how to track a plane in real time.
2. Look at your photos. A photo of the plane at the gate or on the apron often shows the registration near the tail. Zoom in on the rear fuselage.
3. Use a spotter photo database. Sites that collect aircraft photos let you search by airline and type, then compare the plane with the one you flew.

If you only know the type and the airline, you can narrow the answer down using the airline’s fleet list, but without a tracker record or a photo, you cannot be sure which plane it was. See how to find the aircraft type of your flight.

What do the prefixes mean?

The first letters tell you where the aircraft is registered, not where the airline is based. Here are the prefixes you meet most often:

The prefix B is shared by mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong uses B-H, B-K and B-L, and Macau B-M. To tell mainland China from Taiwan, look at the airline. Some airlines register planes abroad, for example for leasing, so the prefix tells you the registry and not always the airline’s country.

How does FlightLog use the registration?

FlightLog is a flight diary for iPhone, iPad and Android. Each flight in your logbook can carry the aircraft type and its registration, and FlightLog keeps a collection of every aircraft type you have flown. You can also track any plane live from ADS-B data, with its position, altitude, speed, heading and the details of the aircraft.

To add a flight, type the flight number and the date, scan a boarding pass, or forward your booking emails. Add the registration once you have found it, so that your diary records the exact aircraft. See also how to keep a flight diary.