FAA enables private aircraft owners to request anonymity
March 31, 2025
The FAA is to make it easier for private aircraft owners to keep their registration information private, with a new initiative allowing owners to “request to keep certain ownership information, like their name and address, private and not publicly available on FAA websites”.
As required by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, signed into law under the Biden Administration in May 2024 and set to run through 2028, ‘Sector 803 Data Privacy’ allows individuals to submit a request through the Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services (CARES) and thus remove certain items of data from public view.
“Publicly available, personally identifiable aircraft information has enabled flight-stalking by anyone, anywhere in the world, with any motive,” explained the NBAA, adding: “Congress has historically recognised that the situation raises serious concerns regarding passenger security, safety and corporate espionage”. NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen concluded that he was therefore “pleased with the steps the FAA has taken to protect entrepreneurs and businesses”.
The move may well benefit high-profile celebrities whose publicly available FAA registration information makes it easier to track their private jets via a number of online resources, many of which use ADS-B data combined with publicly available registration details to provide near- or real-time updates as to the whereabouts and potential plans of individuals and their aircraft.
In recent years, open-source flight tracking has come under mainstream media attention for its seemingly relentless pursuit household names such as Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. Although not illegal, it does rase concerns over an individual’s right to privacy, as well as larger security and safety connotations.
The FAA is also evaluating whether to default to “withholding the personally identifiable information of private aircraft owners and operators from the public aircraft registry,” although under such circumstances, owners and operators would have the means to download their data when needed.
The new opt-in data privacy initiative builds on the previous Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) programme, itself implementing the requirements set forth in the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Bill. As the FAA explained, “the Administrator shall, upon request of a private aircraft owner or operator, block the registration number of the aircraft from any public dissemination or display, except in data made available to a Government agency, for the non-commercial flights of the owner or operator”. Limiting this data also limits tracking information transmitted by internet tracking providers.
In conjunction with LADD (which only addresses FAA-related data), the US regulator also created the Privacy ICAO Address (PIA) programme in 2019, preventing third-party data sources from capturing ICAO aircraft addresses directly from ADS-B out transmissions.
