What the Record Shows

What we collect

Terminal keeps 48 public datasets, every file dated, checksummed and kept as published. The U.S. aircraft registry is the spine, and the rest join to it by operator, carrier or place.

The aircraft registry

Every U.S. registered aircraft, drones included, tied to its owner, kept point in time since March 2026, with history reconstructed back to August 2023.

Waivers, certificates and approvals

Which operators may fly beyond the basic rules or carry passengers or cargo for hire, and the regulatory approvals for new aircraft.

Airports and vertiports

Every airport, heliport and landing site, and the proposed vertiports before they are built.

Federal contracts

Drone contract awards by recipient, lined up with the fleets of the companies that win them, and federal rail grants in eight western states.

Autonomous driving and trucking

Permits, authorizations, complaints and crash reports for self-driving vehicles by operator and by state, and inspections and crashes for the autonomous trucking carriers we watch.

EV charging and energy

Every public charging and fueling site, a national charging file from France, and electric vehicle registrations in Washington.

Rail

Crossings, accidents, weekly service metrics and the national rail network, with the rail data covering eight western states.

Towns and policy

Income, rent, home values, migration, weather and air quality by place, and federal rules a day before they are published.

International registers

Aircraft and drone registers and statistics from the Netherlands, Japan and the European Union.

How we do it

• We capture every public file on its own schedule.
• We keep each version as a point in time instead of overwriting it.
• We map aircraft to owners, and owners to tickers where they exist.
• An independent Auditor re-derives every published number before it goes out.

When we get something wrong, we say so in public: our corrections are logged here.

What it shows

1. a. Closest publication to Oct 20, 2025 (a Monday, with no publication) is Tue Oct 21, 2025: 10,553 large drones. 2013 is the year-end file of Dec 29, 2013.
2. b. This year means the publication of Dec 31, 2025 to the publication of Oct 20, 2026. Delivery drones: valid registrations on delivery aircraft models. Zipline: registrant name begins ZIPL (all spellings). Amazon: registrant name begins AMAZ (all spellings).
3. c. DJI: the maker named on the aircraft model record is exactly DJI. Agricultural drones: valid registrations on agricultural aircraft models.
4. d. Rounds reported by the companies, filings or the press, through Oct 17, 2026, for five delivery drone companies; the delivery arms of large parents are not counted.

Large drones: valid registrations (status V, T or M) on aircraft models in our five drone categories: agricultural, delivery, defense, inspection and entertainment. Most drones under 55 lb are registered separately and are not in this file. Counts are from the registry file of Tue Oct 20, 2026.

What we’re watching next

• Flying beyond sight. We will track the status of the proposed Part 108 rule on flying beyond visual line of sight, and measure how registrations move around each step.
• New delivery cities. We will count the metros where operators announce new delivery service, and set each against the drones registered.
• Air taxis. We will log each certification step for air taxis and count the air taxi aircraft and reserved numbers on the registry.