AOPA asks FAA to enhance aircraft registry privacy

The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 directed the FAA to develop a program allowing aircraft owners to voluntarily request that personally identifiable information (PII) including the owner's name and address be withheld from the public. The FAA initiated the program on March 28, and now registered owners who set up an account with the Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services (CARES) can use that system to request their contact information be redacted from the public database.

The new policy offers a degree of protection for owners who choose to seek it, in much the same way that the Drivers Privacy Protection Act of 1994 cut off the ability of the general public to look up the names and addresses of vehicle owners by license plate. The 1994 law was passed following abuses of state motor vehicle registries, which allowed bad actors to stalk individuals for nefarious purposes—including the 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose killer obtained her address from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

"We fail to see why there should be a different standard for the owners and pilots of privately owned and operated aircraft," AOPA Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Murray Huling wrote in comments submitted in response to the FAA request. Huling asked the FAA to take the privacy measure a step further, redacting or otherwise withholding PII by default, rather than requiring owners to request this protection.

"At a fundamental level, AOPA does not believe it is appropriate for any entity, aside from applicable federal regulators, law enforcement, and organizations that provide aviation safety-related and requested services, to have access to the PII currently available in the Aircraft Registry without the express permission of the owner of that information. Under the current dissemination and display policy, the privacy, security, and safety of private aircraft owners and pilots are very much at risk."

The risk that public dissemination of PII poses to aircraft owners goes far beyond what car owners used to face, thanks to the advent of ADS-B, which the FAA mandated in certain airspace in 2020. The mandate was imposed with assurances to AOPA that aircraft position data would be used only to enhance airspace safety and efficiency. In practice, however, the data has been used far more expansively.

"With increasing frequency, a pattern of misuse of personal registry information" has emerged, Huling noted, "often accompanied by the improper use of ADS-B tracking data, to confirm ownership and personal address for the purposes of collecting fees, filing frivolous lawsuits and questionable enforcement actions." Huling wrote that these other uses undermine the core safety mission for which ADS-B was created: "The public availability of personal information on the Aircraft Registry and the improper use of ADS-B data simply acts as a strong deterrent for more pilots to equip their aircraft with ADS-B."

More than 600 comments were posted to the public docket by the June 4 deadline, many of them from individual aircraft owners echoing AOPA's arguments. Airport operators seeking to automate invoices based on ADS-B data opposed the policy, and asked the FAA to ensure PII remains available so that automated billing can continue.

The Idaho Airport Management Association listed "cost recovery and billing" first among its "key concerns" about the new policy: "Billing transient aircraft for landing fees, customs fees, and tie-down charges requires reliable ownership information. Without it, our ability to recover legitimate costs diminishes—and those costs may instead fall on local users and taxpayers." The Collier County Airport Authority in Florida expressed a similar view, arguing that removing PII without an alternative means to access the information "would severely impair our ability to … enforce financial obligations: Many aircraft operators may exploit anonymity to evade payment of overnight parking fees and landing fees, which are vital for airport funding and maintenance."

Landing fees—automated by third-party service providers—have been imposed unilaterally and with little or no public discussion at many airports across the country, without justification of financial need based on balance sheets, or exploration of other options that airports may use to generate revenue.

Other concerns about withholding PII from the public aircraft registry include impairing the process of buying and selling aircraft, which requires verification of ownership. Huling wrote that empowering aircraft owners with the ability to share that information selectively through the CARES system would address this concern.

"AOPA believes the FAA should give owners control over their privacy and establish a system whereby owners can grant immediate, one-time, or temporary access to their PII," Huling wrote. "There is precedent for this in FAA's Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) program, where an operator can specify individual vendors (i.e. flight tracking services) who can see their registration number information."

Giving aircraft owners control over who can access their PII would also protect owners from another form of fraud related to purchase and sale of aircraft, Huling wrote: "AOPA is aware of at least one instance where a bad actor wrongfully claimed ownership of an aircraft through fraudulent means, likely using PII from FAA sources to file a fraudulent bill of sale and registration application."

The FAA has not announced a timeline for what further action, if any, it will take in response to the comments received.