Are general aviation aircraft tracked?

ch-aviation does not currently track general aviation aircraft data within its core platform. However, if you are looking for data on aircraft types outside of our standard coverage, our Authority Fleet Data feed may serve as a suitable alternative.

What is Authority Fleet Data?

Authority Fleet Data is a professional data service that aggregates publicly available fleet information gathered from civil aviation authorities, air navigation service providers, and RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum) approval databases on your behalf.

The dataset covers approximately 470,000 aircraft records and, beyond fixed-wing aircraft, also includes:

• Helicopters
• Registered UAVs
• Hot air balloons
• Other aircraft types available in national registry data

Where available, each record may include the following fields:

• Registration
• Aircraft type
• Serial number
• Maximum take-off weight
• Engine details
• Owner
• Seat configuration
• Hexcode

The dataset is updated monthly, in line with the update intervals of the underlying public sources.

What are the limitations of Authority Fleet Data?

As this dataset is sourced directly from public authorities, there are some important limitations to be aware of:

• Coverage gaps — Not every country makes full aircraft registry data publicly available, which means some regions may have limited or no coverage.
• Variable fill rates — Data quality and completeness depend on what each country collects and publishes. Fill rates reflect what is made available by each source.
• Minimal data cleansing — ch-aviation normalises the data into a consistent column structure and resolves basic formatting issues, but does not otherwise edit or enrich the source data.
• Current status only — The dataset reflects the current state of each registry and does not include historical records.

Despite these limitations, Authority Fleet Data provides aircraft type and registration coverage for approximately 98% of all aircraft movements tracked by ADS-B flight data, which we believe to be industry leading.

If this article does not answer your question or resolve your issue, you can always submit a ticket and our Customer Support team will get back to you as soon as possible.