An "aircraft damage history report" means checking whether an airframe has ever been in an accident or incident serious enough to be filed with the National Transportation Safety Board — and, separately, whether it carries any recent ownership or lien filings that suggest it is changing hands right now.
There is no single official document with that name. What exists is a set of public federal records, and a damage history report is really just those records pulled together, cross-checked, and explained.
What a real check covers
- NTSB accident and incident history — matched first by manufacturer serial number, then by the current tail number, because tail numbers get reassigned and serial numbers do not. See how NTSB records are actually split across several files.
- A cross-tail check — whether the airframe's serial number turns up an accident filed under a different registration it wore in the past. This is the case a plain tail-number search always misses.
- Current registration status — valid, expired, or cancelled, and why.
- Recent filings — bills of sale, lien filings (security agreements), and releases recorded against the aircraft, which is a different signal from damage but matters for the same decision. See the lien guide.
What it cannot cover
A records check answers "has anything been reported and filed." It cannot tell you the condition of the airplane sitting in front of you today. Corrosion, deferred maintenance, and a poorly executed repair rarely show up in a federal database. That is what a mechanic's pre-purchase inspection is for — see what one costs.
It also cannot report damage that was never filed with the NTSB in the first place. Minor incidents below the reporting threshold — a hard landing, a ramp scrape — routinely go unrecorded. A clean report means nothing was reported, not that nothing ever happened.
The single most common mistake
Searching only the tail number painted on the airplane. If that airframe was ever substantially damaged, repaired, and re-registered under a new N-number, the accident is filed under the old number — and a search on today's tail comes back clean. Our $79 report runs the serial-number cross-match automatically; see what it includes, or try the free lookup first at the tail number lookup to see what it finds before you decide to buy.