ATA iSpec 2200, Information Standards for Aviation Maintenance

The commercial aviation information standard for maintenance documentation (maintenance manuals, illustrated parts catalogs, wiring data and service bulletins) organized around the ATA chapter numbering system the industry has used for decades. It defines both the content structure and how that content is exchanged between manufacturers, suppliers and operators.

A shared numbering scheme that assigns every aircraft system a chapter number, so that the same system is found in the same place regardless of aircraft type or manufacturer. Air conditioning is chapter 21 on any aircraft; landing gear is chapter 32. The full list is on this page. Its value is precisely that it is universal, which is also why it outlives the documentation standards built on top of it.

It depends on what is forcing the question. If new aircraft arrive with S1000D data you will be running both regardless, and the decision is about how long. If the driver is a wish to modernize, the honest assessment is that the migration cost is real and the benefit depends on whether you need the applicability and lifecycle machinery S1000D provides. We are happy to say when the answer is not yet.

The industry's shared numbering scheme for aircraft systems, inherited from ATA Spec 100 and carried forward by iSpec 2200: every system has a chapter number that holds across aircraft types and manufacturers, from 21 for air conditioning to 32 for landing gear. The full chapter list, grouped the way the specification groups it, is on this page, and the numbering reaches far beyond documentation, into maintenance planning, parts, and defect reporting systems.

No. It is an industry standard maintained through Airlines for America, not a regulation, no aviation authority mandates it. It becomes binding the way most documentation standards do: through contracts and data exchange agreements between manufacturers, suppliers, and operators. In practice that makes it nearly unavoidable in commercial aviation, but the obligation is commercial, not legal.

Revision 2025.1, at the time of writing. The specification is revised roughly annually but not every year: after 2012 the listed revisions are 2014.1, 2016.1, 2017.1, 2018.1, 2021.1, 2023.1, 2024.1, and 2025.1. It carries document type definitions for its manual types, and 2025.1 added missing attributes to the component maintenance manual DTD.

No. iSpec 2200 is licensed and sold by Airlines for America through its publications store, in single-user and multi-user editions; members of the ATA e-Business Program receive it as a membership benefit. Free PDFs found online are unauthorized or superseded copies, and rarely the revision your contracts cite.

The Air Transport Association, the former name of Airlines for America (A4A), which still publishes the specification through the ATA e-Business Program. The ATA name stays on the specifications, the program, and the chapter numbering that the industry still calls ATA chapters.

Not officially. There is no published statement retiring or freezing iSpec 2200, and it is still being revised. Its lineage explains the confusion: in 2000 it absorbed ATA Spec 100 and Spec 2100, which were frozen at their 1999 revisions. Civil aviation's S1000D route runs through ATA Spec 1000BR, and many operators run both for years.