Commercial and Government Registration/Serial Publications

[John Creasey]

Hopefully this is the correct sub-forum for this topic.

I'm currently in the process of re-formatting my personal database for aircraft sightings since July 2004 and am considering the most comprehensive database or publication to verify the various details required (frame sub-type, manufacturer serial number, owner/lessor & operator). I have in the past used jp airline-fleets though my reasons for not continuing are explained well in this thread:-

http://www.flightglobal.com/airspace/fo ... aspx#31315

My predominant interest is in commercial and government operators, and use On Dutch Wings for the military items of interest (specifically Wing/Squadron, etc).

I would be interested to hear how other members gather their data, many thanks.

[ehusmann]

My main source of info for checking the data you refer to is Airlinerlist.com. It has downloadable Excel files with extensive info on a large number of civil types. All the common ones (Airbus, Boeing, MDD, Embraer, ATR, Bombardier), but also rare types, bizjets, Russian etc. The lists are full production lists with data often going back to the 70ties or even further. It is regularly updated and I have found very little errors in it so far.

In cases where it is not up to date (new biz jets for example), I use laasdata.com or airfleets.net. But I think I use it for 99% of what I see.

Erwin

[Thijs]

I would be interested to hear how other members gather their data, many thanks.

The Scramble Team also!

Strange (untill now) nobody mentions one of our publications or one of our databases.

Is their a main reason for that? How can we improve services? What makes other sources better? Maybe you can help answer one of those questions.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Thijs

[ehusmann]

The reason why I only rarely use the Scramble Databases is the fact that you cannot easily browse it. You can search on a single plane, but you cannot get an overview of all planes of a certain airline or just the complete list. Not even as a member (the 60 record maximum really is too low). With the other sites I mentioned you can get that overview and with the Excel lists of Airlinerlist you can download it and make your own selections, sorts, etc etc. Much faster and much easier.

The Scramble database is handy if you are just searching for a single plane, but it is annoying if you want to fill your log of a full days spotting.

As far as I know Scramble hasn't published any civil registration books yet, but in any case, civil registration books are outdated the moment you publish it....

Erwin