Canada Aircraft Register Monitor: CCAR Mark Status & Sale Alerts

Watch named Canadian-registered aircraft (by registration mark, C-XXXX) against the official Transport Canada Canadian Civil Aircraft Register (CCAR) daily database download. Get one event when an aircraft on your list has its registration cancelled or expired, a sale reported, or its registered owner changed.

Quick start: replace the example marks with your aircraft (C-FCEU, CFCEU or FCEU all work), set sourceMode = live, then save as a Task and schedule it daily or weekly. No API key needed.

Who this is for:

• Aircraft lessors, lenders and aviation finance teams tracking collateral (a cancelled registration or reported sale is an early warning)
• Aviation insurers and brokers keeping insured-aircraft schedules in line with the register
• Aircraft dealers, brokers and MRO / FBO operators following aircraft they sell, maintain or base
• Fleet, flight-school and charter operators checking that every aircraft they fly stays registered

The recurring job: tell me as soon as the register shows that an aircraft we finance, insure or operate is cancelled, expired, sold or has a new owner, so the file can be acted on before the next renewal or claim.

Billable events (PPE ccar-aircraft-status-event-delivered @ $0.02):

Group	Event	Meaning
status	STATUS_CHANGED	Registered ↔ Registration Cancelled / Registration Expired (adverse=true for cancelled/expired)
sale	SALE_REPORTED	The register's sale-reported flag was set (adverse=true)
owner	OWNER_CHANGED	Registered owner set changed (organisations named; individual owners counted only, never named)
directory	APPEARED / DROPPED	Mark appeared in, or disappeared from, the register download
operations (opt-in)	PURPOSE_CHANGED / FLIGHT_AUTHORITY_CHANGED / BASE_CHANGED	Private/Commercial/State purpose, flight authority or base province changed

Non-billable: RUN_STATUS (FIXTURE_HEALTH, MONITOR_IDLE, CATCHUP_COMPLETE, HEALTH_OK), first-run baselines and duplicates. A quiet watchlist costs only the platform start fee.

Scope: a watchlist monitor, not a bulk dump of the register billed per row. It does not cover airworthiness directives, service difficulty reports or the Cape Town International Registry.

First run vs later runs

Default sourceMode=fixture is a free health check: one non-billable RUN_STATUS row, not product data.

In live mode, run 1 stores a baseline for each aircraft (no change events, no product charge). Run 2 onwards emits only the differences against that checkpoint. Keep using the same Task so the checkpoint carries over.

What you get per $0.02 event

Each event is one unique change for a named aircraft. It includes the registration mark, aircraft make/model, registration status, an adverse flag, before and after values, organisation owner names (individuals are shown only as a count), the register's modified/ineffective date, the file date (as_of) and the official source URL. You are never charged for RUN_STATUS, baselines, quiet MONITOR_IDLE runs, invalid marks, duplicates or fixture SAMPLE rows.

Example output (SAMPLE)

SAMPLE: illustrative field shape only, not a real event.

{
  "registration_mark": "C-SAMPLE01",
  "aircraft": "EXAMPLE AIRCRAFT CO (SAMPLE) SAMPLE-100",
  "event_type": "STATUS_CHANGED",
  "event_subtype": "REGISTRATION_CANCELLED",
  "previous_value": "Registered",
  "new_value": "Registration Cancelled",
  "effective_date": "2026-10-02",
  "adverse": true,
  "as_of": "2026-10-06",
  "billable": false,
  "sample": true,
  "summary": "SAMPLE (fixture demo data with placeholder entities, not a real event)"
}

Input

• marks: Canadian registration marks, e.g. C-FCEU, CFCEU or FCEU (prefix optional). Aliases: registrationMarks, tailNumbers.
• sourceMode: fixture (free health check) or live (official CCAR download)
• signalGroups: any of directory, status, sale, owner, operations (default: directory + status + sale + owner)

Production use

{
  "marks": ["C-FCEU", "C-FAJA", "C-GKQA", "C-FBBO"],
  "sourceMode": "live",
  "signalGroups": ["directory", "status", "sale", "owner"]
}

Source and honesty notes

• Official file: https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/2/ccarcs-riacc/download/ccarcsdb.zip (carscurr.txt + carsownr.txt + carslayout.txt), refreshed daily by Transport Canada. One ~5 MB download per run.
• Durable key: the registration mark. On 2026-10-05 the file held 34,901 marks: 33,579 Registered, 1,320 Registration Cancelled and 2 Registration Expired; 1,322 had a sale reported. About 300 records are modified per month.
• Privacy: the source lists individual owners' names and addresses. This Actor never outputs them; it shows organisation owners by name and individuals only as a count, and detects owner changes with a one-way fingerprint.
• Cadence: changes appear when Transport Canada refreshes the download, not in real time. as_of is the file's Last-Modified date.
• Attribution: Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Source: Transport Canada, Canadian Civil Aircraft Register. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Transport Canada.

Pricing

Event	USD
ccar-aircraft-status-event-delivered	$0.02
apify-actor-start	$0.00005

Limitations

• The CCAR is not a title registry. Check the official CCAR search, and the International Registry where relevant, before relying on a status for a financing, sale or claim.
• Cancelled registrations normally stay in the download for a time. DROPPED fires only if a mark disappears entirely.
• Covers register status, sale flag, owners and operations fields only. It does not include airworthiness, maintenance or accident data.