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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://teardowns.aero/docs/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Every teardown has an audience field that controls who on the platform can see its attached documents. Other fields (MSN, tail number, location, etc.) are always visible to anyone with platform access only documents are gated by audience.
Audience picker UI with checkboxes for Airline, Lessor, OEM, MRO, Distributor, Others

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What you can set it to

ValueMeaning
null (or omit)“Anyone with platform access” the default.
Non-empty list of company typesOnly viewers whose org belongs to one of those company types can see the documents.
The six allowed company types:
  • Airline
  • Lessor
  • OEM
  • MRO
  • Distributor
  • Others

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Default behaviour

A freshly-created teardown has audience = null. Anyone logged into Teardowns.aero with seller or buyer access can see its documents. For most teardowns, the default is just right. You’d typically only set an audience in special cases, for example, when a teardown contains operator-sensitive maintenance records, or when an OEM would like to keep their incident statements visible only to operators flying the same airframe.

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Two ways to set it

The document-upload endpoints accept an optional audience form field a comma-separated string of company types: 
curl -X POST "$base_url/public/v1/teardown/documents/$teardown_id" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $api_key" \
  -H "X-Organization-Id: $org_id" \
  -F "file=@/path/to/sensitive.pdf" \
  -F "audience=Airline, MRO, Others"
One round trip:
  • Uploads the file.
  • Appends the URL to documents[].
  • Sets audience = ["Airline", "MRO", "Others"] on the teardown.
Case-insensitive (mro, airline works). Whitespace tolerated. Duplicates dropped. Invalid values return 422 invalid_audience with the full allowed list and crucially, before the file is uploaded, so you never get an orphan upload.

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2. Via PATCH after the fact

If you’ve already uploaded the document and just want to change who can see it, use the update endpoint: 
curl -X PATCH "$base_url/public/v1/teardowns/$teardown_id" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $api_key" \
  -H "X-Organization-Id: $org_id" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"audience": ["Airline","MRO"]}'
PATCH takes the JSON shape a real array, not a CSV. (Different content type, different convention.) Setting audience: null clears the restriction back to “anyone with platform access”.

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Reading audience back

GET /public/v1/teardowns/{id} returns audience as part of the response. It’s null for never-set teardowns and an array for restricted ones: 
{
  "teardown_id": "...",
  ...
  "audience": ["Airline", "MRO"],
  "audience_set_at": "2026-05-26T10:00:00Z",
  ...
}
The audience_set_at timestamp records when the value was last changed useful for support investigations.

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What the viewer sees

When a viewer’s company type isn’t in the audience list, they get the teardown row in browse results but with the document URLs blanked out. The teardown’s existence isn’t hidden just the doc URLs. (Hiding the row entirely would break browse counts and surprise buyers who can otherwise see the teardown listing.) Three exceptions to the blanking rule:
  1. Same-org viewers always see all their own documents the audience never applies to your own org.
  2. Platform admins [ Teardowns.aero ] always see all documents.
  3. No audience set (null) every viewer with platform access sees the documents.

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Audit trail

Audience changes write a dedicated audit row:
  • audience.set when previous_audience was null
  • audience.changed when it was a different non-null list
Useful for “when did this become restricted, and who did it?” support questions.