Overview

The entire US civil aircraft registry as an offline lookup server. Resolve a tail number to its aircraft, make/model, engine, year, and registered owner; search by owner, type, or state; decode manufacturer and engine codes to specs; and resolve registration status across active, deregistered, and reserved records.

The data is the FAA's Releasable Aircraft Database — the full registry published by the FAA Civil Aviation Registry as a public-domain bulk download (a US Government work, no copyright). There is no keyless live FAA registry API, so the server builds a local index from that download instead: MASTER → ACFTREF → ENGINE are pre-joined into an embedded SQLite + FTS5 index, and every coded field is decoded at query time. Queries hit that local index — keyless, no runtime network, no per-request rate limit.

The index is not bundled with the package. On first use the operator runs mirror:init to download and build it (see First-run setup). Owner name and address are redacted by default (see Owner-PII redaction).

Composes with live flight-tracking data: the Mode S (hex) code this server returns is the ICAO 24-bit address that OpenSky and similar feeds key on, so a tail number or transponder code seen in the air decodes here to its aircraft and status.

Tools

Five tools covering the registry — two exact-key lookups, two full-text searches, and one cross-file status resolver. Searches return decoded summaries with N-numbers (or 6–7-character reference codes) to drill into via the matching lookup.

faa_lookup_registration

The primary tool. Decode one N-number to its full record in a single call.

• Accepts N12345 or 12345 — the leading N is optional, and the number is normalized before lookup
• Resolves the MASTER → ACFTREF → ENGINE join and decodes every coded field (aircraft type, engine type, status, airworthiness class, region) — each surfaced as both the raw FAA code and the decoded label
• Returns the Mode S code in both octal and hex; the hex form is the ICAO 24-bit address used by live flight-tracking feeds
• Owner name/address are included only when FAA_REDACT_OWNER_PII=false; otherwise ownerRedacted: true flags that they were withheld
• A known-but-inactive number (deregistered or reserved) is not found here — use faa_get_registration_status for the cross-file answer

faa_get_registration_status

Resolve where an N-number stands across the registry, even when it is no longer active.

• Checks the active (MASTER), deregistered (DEREG), and reserved (RESERVED) files in priority order, returning a discriminated recordType: active, deregistered, reserved, or unknown
• A number that was never issued resolves to recordType: "unknown" — a valid, informative answer rather than an error
• Each branch carries the fields relevant to that state (active: status + airworthiness + dates; deregistered: cancel date + serial; reserved: reservation type + reserve/purge dates)
• Owner-PII–free — returns status facts only

faa_search_registrations

Full-text search over active registrations, returning decoded summaries with N-numbers for follow-up.

• Filter by ownerName, makeModel, state, aircraftType, or modeSCode; at least one filter is required
• Owner-name search is disabled when FAA_REDACT_OWNER_PII is on — search by make/model, state, type, or Mode S code instead
• Free-text terms are column-scoped: makeModel matches make/model only, never owner name or city
• Each result carries an N-number to pass to faa_lookup_registration for full detail
• Every response reports totalCount across all matches, so a partial result set is never mistaken for complete; page through it with limit (1–200, default 25) and offset — a truncated response names the nextOffset to request

faa_search_aircraft_types

Discover the 6–7-character manufacturer/model/series codes by name before decoding them.

• Filter by query (manufacturer/model name, full-text), aircraftType code, or category code; at least one filter is required
• Returns reference summaries with the code to pass to faa_get_aircraft_type
• Every response reports totalCount across all matches; page through it with limit (1–200, default 25) and offset — a truncated response names the nextOffset to request

Resources

All registry data is also reachable via tools — the resource is a convenience for clients that inject resources as context. Tool-only clients (the majority) reach the same record through faa_lookup_registration, so no data is locked behind the resource. Search collections are not exposed as resources; use the search tools instead.

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core:

• Declarative tool and resource definitions — single file per primitive, framework handles registration and validation
• Unified error handling — handlers throw, framework catches, classifies, and formats, with typed per-tool error contracts and recovery hints
• Pluggable auth: none, jwt, oauth
• Swappable storage backends: in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1
• Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
• STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports
• MCP protocol revision 2026-07-28 alongside initialize-negotiated 2025-era clients

FAA-registry-specific:

• Offline and keyless at runtime — every query hits the local SQLite + FTS5 index; no API key, no runtime network, no rate limit
• Built on the framework MirrorService: mirror:init builds the index out-of-band, and the HTTP server schedules a daily refresh aligned to the FAA's nightly re-release
• Pre-joined MASTER → ACFTREF → ENGINE records, so one call returns "2008 Cessna 172S, Lycoming IO-360, valid registration" rather than raw join codes
• Fail-safe owner-PII redaction — redaction defaults on and drops owner name/address from output and disables owner-name search

Agent-friendly output: