Trust & verification
How we verify
We'd rather tell you exactly what we checked than let a badge do the talking. Every claim below maps to something specific — if you can't re-verify it yourself, we shouldn't have said it.
All information is provided as a courtesy to the buyer and is presumed to be correct. However, the buyer should independently verify all information before making a decision.
Free FAA registry & incident lookup
Every listing's N-number is checked against the FAA's public Releasable Aircraft Registry — registration status, registrant, make/model/serial, covering every registered aircraft. This data is synced monthly from the FAA's own bulk dataset, not looked up live, so it can lag a real-time FAA query by up to a month. Try the free lookup.
Incident/accident history is synced from the NTSB's own developer API, backfilled year by year — so older history is still filling in for some aircraft, and its absence doesn't guarantee a clean history.
Logbook & damage disclosure tiers
There are three distinct levels — we never use “Verified” loosely:
Not reviewed
Seller-entered structured fields only. Not independently checked.
Logbook Reviewed
Vapor Trail staff checked the uploaded logbook documents for completeness — continuity of entries, annuals present, referenced repairs have attached paperwork. This is not an airworthiness review.
Verified
An actual A&P/IA reviewed AD compliance and repair sign-offs against the airframe. This is still not a physical inspection — a pre-buy inspection is always still required before you buy.
FAA title/lien check (paid, optional)
No automated title-search vendor is integrated yet. When a seller pays for this, Vapor Trail staff runs the actual free FAA registry lien lookup and posts a dated summary on the listing. It is never required to publish a listing.
What we don't do
- We never hold or transmit funds — use a licensed third-party escrow service for closing.
- We don't physically inspect any aircraft — a pre-buy inspection is always your responsibility.
- We don't guarantee a clean history for a listing with no incident data on file — it may simply not be imported yet.