Anyone know where to find aircraft data?

ArrowFlyer86

ArrowFlyer86

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The Little Arrow That Could
As a hobby project I'm building an application meant for easily searching and working with civilian aircraft data.

Unfortunately, the most important ingredient (the aircraft data itself) has been hard to come by except in bits and pieces which will require a lot of collating and standardization to make them uniform enough to use. Thus, does anyone know of a database of aircraft data, either for GA, or commercial?

Types of attributes I'm looking for:
- Identifiers: aircraft mfr (Boeing), name (787-9), common name (dreamliner),
- Performance: Vx, Vy, range, Vne, VSo, 55%/65%/75% cruise speed, rate of climb, etc
- Attributes: # of engines, has-retractable-gear, wingspan, GTOW, etc...
- Organized in excel sheets, database table or table(s). Any format.
- I'm OK to spend $$$ if there is a subscription/paid data service that has this info.

Originally I was going to pay a data entry person to transcribe the metrics from TAP's specs pages, but a lot of their info is flat out wrong - and not exhaustive enough of what I want.

Any suggestions are helpful!
 
As best as I have found, the EAA doesn't even have a searchable database of available kits and plans...something I would have thought would have been maybe the second thing that organization would have done when computers were "invented"!
and seems to me that this list would be no where near as long as "all civilian aircraft"

I've noticed a few times searching to compare the "wing loading spec" between various models that even that isn't consistently recorded anywhere I've found...basically not easy to do

The best thing I've stumbled across in this regard is AOPA's database but I doubt that's anywhere near "all civilian models"
https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-ownership/aircraft-fact-sheets

all I can say is good luck!
 
Hmm, so you are working a database project, that you need the input from a similar database to fill in the data.

Hmmm, why do you need another database then? :D
 
Pinecone said:
Hmm, so you are working a database project, that you need the input from a similar database to fill in the data.

Hmmm, why do you need another database then? :D
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[EDITED MY RESPONSE]

Excellent question!
I'm working on the search engine functionality around it so that you can search for and compare aircraft based on a bunch of different attributes (cruise speed, weight, etc). But my "value add" so to speak is in building the interface to search for those aircraft and tools to do the comparisons. Sourcing the data itself is another matter all together that I'd like to avoid!
 
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And of course, manufacturers NEVER lie about performance data. :D

But wouldn't it be likely that the database with all the data in it would have some search engine to do what you trying to do???
 
Pinecone said:
And of course, manufacturers NEVER lie about performance data. :D

But wouldn't it be likely that the database with all the data in it would have some search engine to do what you trying to do???
Click to expand...

Another fair question!

I suppose it is quite possible, but based on me poking around and trying to find anything resembling authoritative aircraft data (w/o accessing every POH)... the answer seems to be no. Finding good data is step 1, only then can I really consider the search capabilities of the service.

So far the best one I've found is the database for VREF (the aircraft pricing service). They have a number of metrics and performance numbers for different aircraft models, which seem to be more or less correct (unlike TAP, which will show Bonanzas with a 75% cruise speed of 130kts). However, the data they track seems to be somewhat inconsistent from model to model.

But I'm all ears in case anyone knows of a solution!
 
My point was, IF such a database existed, it would already have a search engine.

I don’t such a database is around.

And to get the data, yes, people would have access all the POHs. And then you run in all the different years with changes of a given model.

And you will have to normalize the data, so that they are based on similar conditions. Otherwise the date is not comparable.

Maybe you can build the framework and then put surveys for the data on all the different forums for owners to submit.
 
Kitplanes has a searchable database, limited to their focus area. If you are thinking all categories of aircraft, none that I know of. You can find industry specific suppliers, but expect it to be pricey. E.g. transport category performance numbers vary with altitude, loading, cg, etc. to feed dispatch planning software.
 
Janes.com publisher of Jane’s all the worlds aircraft. Seems to be the most referenced for that kind of thing.
 
Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
Since there isn't a good, single source for this I decided the best way to do it was to chunk it up and pay someone to collect/organize it for me.

What I'm doing is having the data entry specialist collect a baseline of information for me from the major manufacturers and their models (cessna, piper, mooney, beech, aviat, cubcrafters -- a total of 34 of the top GA manufacturers/kit planes). It's a lot of the basic specs (performance, weights, standard passenger capacities, retractable vs fixed, etc). I won't collect a lot of the smaller mfrs to start b/c the cost/tradeoff just isn't there (and good god are there are lot of tiny mfrs out there!). From there I'm going to take @Pinecone and @JMichael suggestions of essentially crowdsourcing it. People can add additional aircraft or make edits/propose corrections if something is wrong.

After the plebeian GA (single/twin/turboprop) data collection is done the data entry person will then move onto the high-roller commercial stuff (RJs, gulfstreams, airliners, etc).

Ultimately this data will be exposed as a webpage to make aircraft search and compare an easier process (just a/c specs, not sales listings or anything like that). Kind of like @Mahneuvers did with his GA restaurant site, I'm hoping to snag a few beta users once this is ready for review. It's a non profit enterprise, just something I want to do for fun.
 
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Qbynewbie (sp??) built a spreadsheet several years ago that may be very useful. I think I have a copy somewhere, but it would be best to get it directly from him if you can. Lots of data.
 
somorris said:
Qbynewbie (sp??) built a spreadsheet several years ago that may be very useful. I think I have a copy somewhere, but it would be best to get it directly from him if you can. Lots of data.
Click to expand...
Thanks! Just sent him a DM on that topic.
 
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