Faa MCP Server

Faa MCP server is a hosted integration for AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol. Offline, keyless lookup of the US civil aircraft registry — decode N-numbers, search records.

What you get

@cyanheads/faa-aircraft-registry-mcp-server Decode N-numbers to aircraft, engine, status, and owner; search the US civil aircraft registry by owner, type, or state; resolve active/deregistered/reserved status — offline via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 5 Tools • 1 Resource

The entire US civil aircraft registry as an offline lookup server. Resolve a tail number to its aircraft, make/model, engine, year, and registered owner; search by owner, type, or state; decode manufacturer and engine codes to specs; and resolve registration status across active, deregistered, and reserved records.

• Declarative tool and resource definitions — single file per primitive, framework handles registration and validation
• Unified error handling — handlers throw, framework catches, classifies, and formats, with typed per-tool error contracts and recovery hints
• Pluggable auth: none, jwt, oauth
• Swappable storage backends: in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1
• Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
• STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports

Setting it up

Being a remote server, there is no local install. You register the endpoint with your client, authorise it once, and the tools appear.

What the assistant can call

Once Faa is connected, these are the calls the assistant has available:

• faa_lookup_registration — Decode one N-number to its full pre-joined active record — aircraft make/model, engine, year, airworthiness, registration status, Mode S code, and
• faa_get_registration_status — Resolve an N-number across all three status files (active, deregistered, reserved) in priority order, returning a definitive recordType
• faa_search_registrations — Search active registrations by owner name, make/model, state, aircraft type, or Mode S code
• faa_search_aircraft_types — Search the aircraft reference table by manufacturer/model name, type, or category to discover manufacturer-model codes
• faa_get_aircraft_type — Decode a 6–7-character manufacturer/model/series code to aircraft specs — category, type, engine, seats, weight class, cruise speed, type-certificate
• Prerequisites — The Prerequisites tool exposed by this server
• Installation — 4. Build the index (see First-run setup):

Configuration and credentials

You will need 5 environment variables: MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE, MCP_LOG_LEVEL, FAA_MIRROR_PATH, FAA_DATABASE_URL, MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATH. The server will not start without them, which is usually why the tools fail to appear on a first run. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than in a file you might commit.

• Bun v1.3 or higher (or Node.js v24+). bun:sqlite is built into Bun; a Node-only deployment adds better-sqlite3 (already declared as an optional peer dependency). - Disk space for the built index (a few hundred MB) at FAA_MIRROR_PATH. - Network access at mirror:init / mirror:refresh time to download the FAA ZIP. Not needed at query time.

Before you rely on it

• Your data travels to the provider's service, so the usual questions apply about what you send and what they retain.
• Missing credentials fail quietly in some clients — if no tools show up, check the environment block first.
• MCP clients confirm each tool call by default. Leave that on until you have watched what the faa mcp server does with a few real requests.

Choosing this one

This sits in the developer tooling group, where several servers overlap in what they claim to do but differ sharply once you actually set them up. Faa's toolset — faa_lookup_registration, faa_get_registration_status, faa_search_registrations and 4 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by cyanheads; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.

This entry was verified against Faa's own documentation before publication; SyncDev keeps the directory reviewed rather than auto-generated.