When a records check turns up an NTSB event, the first thing worth knowing is which word is attached to it: accident or incident. The NTSB does not use them interchangeably — federal regulation draws a specific line between the two, and it changes how seriously to weigh what you're looking at.
The legal definitions
Under 49 CFR 830.2, an accident is an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, between the time anyone boards it intending to fly and the time everyone has disembarked, in which someone suffers death or serious injury, or the aircraft sustains substantial damage. An incident is any other occurrence that affects or could affect the safety of operations — reportable, but below that death/serious-injury/substantial-damage threshold.
How common each one is
Across the 94,093 NTSB events matched to aircraft in the current and historical FAA registry, 95.0% (89,395) are classified as accidents and 4.7% (4,410) as incidents. Most of what shows up in a records search is, by definition, the more serious category — incidents are reported far less often relative to how frequently minor operational issues actually occur, because most never cross the substantial-damage or serious-injury line that makes them reportable at all.
Severity within that record also varies widely: of events with a recorded injury level, 52.5% show no injury, 14.2% minor, 11.1% serious, and 19.7% fatal. An "accident" on file does not automatically mean the worst outcome — read the injury and damage fields, not just the classification.
Why it matters when you're buying
An incident with no damage tells you something happened that was worth reporting, but not that the airframe was hurt. An accident with substantial damage means the aircraft was repaired at some point — which is exactly the finding our rebuilt-after-crash guide covers, and exactly what a bare "clean" search can miss if the damage happened under a different tail number. See how the NTSB's own records are actually organized before assuming a quick search covers everything.
Our free lookup and $79 report show both accidents and incidents matched to an airframe by serial number first, so a reassigned tail doesn't hide the record.