Congress wants to ensure private jets have a way to help stay hidden from the curious public.
Language tucked into sweeping aviation legislation (
Public tracking of private planes is in the spotlight after household names like Elon Musk and Taylor Swift criticized social media accounts documenting their jets’ travel. Swift in December threatened legal action against a student who at the time said he used publicly available data to track ultra-wealthy individuals. Some accounts have been known to find workarounds that don’t rely on FAA data.
Taylor Swift Demands 21-Year-Old Stop Tracking Her Private Jet
The FAA has existing programs that allow aircraft operators to limit identifying data from external flight-tracking services. Those programs— Privacy ICAO aircraft address program and Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed Program — aim to address security and privacy concerns and comply with a 2018 congressional directive, the FAA said. The new FAA bill section would replace the 2018 law.
The agency is reviewing the proposed legislation, the FAA told Bloomberg Government in a statement.
BGOV Bill Summary: FAA Reauthorization Agreement
The bill’s provision, which allows operators to request plane registration numbers be hidden from pubic display, also requires the FAA to establish a program for aircraft operators to apply for a new International Civil Aviation Organization code. Those codes can identify a specific aircraft.
Transparency and Privacy
The FAA bill renews “protections from questionable flight-stalking methods, while ensuring that law-enforcement agencies, security officials, air traffic managers and other appropriate parties” have needed information about all aircraft, Dan Hubbard, senior vice president of communications at National Business Aviation Association, said in an emailed statement. The group lobbied on the overall FAA bill on behalf of private business aviation issues.
Hubbard said the idea that “a person shouldn’t be required to surrender their right to privacy and safety just because they board an aircraft” has been reflected in FAA bills.
“It’s not a giant leap. It builds on, I think, what is FAA’s already strong movement to enhance further the privacy of corporate and general aviation aircraft when people don’t want that to be publicly disclosed,” Kenneth Quinn, a partner at the firm Clyde & Co. and a former FAA chief counsel, said in an interview, adding that the issue requires a balance between transparency and privacy.
Some flight tracking websites are able monitor a plane’s location by crowd sourcing data amassed from thousands of private individuals who use receivers to track aircraft transponder signals — offering a workaround that has allowed aviation enthusiasts to monitor planes without relying on FAA data.
Flight tracking accounts have targeted the whereabouts of planes carrying celebrities and politicians including Swift, Musk,
The FAA bill provision represents “a statutory implementation of this privacy element,” Mark Dombroff, a partner and aviation attorney at Fox Rothschild LLP and a former FAA lawyer, said in an interview. He said the section seems to respond to the security concerns around tracking jets.
“I suspect what they’ll do is they’ll review the procedures they have in place, sort of checking off and make sure that they match up against the mandate and the intent of Congress, and to the extent they have to make changes, they’ll make changes,” he said of the agency.
A similar privacy provision was included in an earlier version of the bill the House passed in July. The Transportation Department previously raised concern with that section of the bill in a January letter, which then included a privacy requirement that’s no longer in the current legislation.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: