A bit of a side project I’ve been working on.
Over the last couple of years, I have been attempting to reserve short tail numbers.
A HUGE problem that I have been dealing with (and anyone else playing this game has been dealing with) is keeping track of which N numbers are being purged on what date.
Purge Dates are constantly changing on any list you create as the reservations are renewed or hopefully not renewed.
This is somewhat of a dark art that nobody (that I can see) talks about publicly.
My guess is that the people doing this all know that if more people are trying to get good tail numbers by attempting to reserve them at the purge, then it’s more difficult for them to get the number.
I know that I was keeping this little hobby of mine under the radar for awhile for that reason!
A complete 180 shift in my thinking happened a few months ago where I decided that it would be nice to see more regular GA pilots get ahold of these numbers instead of seeing the majority of the good numbers going to people trying to resell them for big $$ and in some cases it seems that there are entities sitting on them with no intention to ever use them or sell them.
I’m in the process of building out the systems to be able to reliably issue a newsletter that simply lists what N Numbers have a purge date that matches the day that the newsletter goes out.
That way anyone getting the newsletter can see what N Numbers will be available that evening at midnight central time. (FAA’s Oklahoma Location)
If they see a number that they want then they can try to get it that night.
I’m working on several avenues to fully launch gettailnumbers.com over the next several weeks/months but figured I would first share it here.
The list is/will be free to sign up to.
I currently have all the 1 Number | 1 Letter ones in the system and should have all of the
3 Number | 0 Letter ones in the system by month end.
The newsletter’s probably not going to be going out very often until I get the
2 Number | 1 Letter and 1 Number | 2 Letter ones onboarded by the end of the summer.
The FAA reauthorization act has some wording in it that states they are looking into potentially modifying the way this reservation system works and I will have to maybe pivot or scrap this side project depending on what happens, but for now I am moving ahead.
Have you or anyone you know ever attempted to play this late night purge game to get a tail number reserved?