A survey prepared by the National Business Aviation Association reveals that most members would no longer qualify to have their tail numbers blocked from the Federal Aviation Administration tracking databases.
In a letter to US Department of Transportation secretary Ray LaHood, NBAA president Ed Bolen wrote that 3,270 current users of the block aircraft registration request programme were sent a questionnaire in February to find out how many would continue to qualify for the service under a new FAA interpretation.
At issue is a memorandum of agreement between the agency and subscribers to its National Airspace System status information data, which allows requestors to have tail number tracking information withheld under the BARR programme.
Based on a 2010 federal court opinion related to privacy of airspace users, however, the FAA is proposing to restrict the blocking only to operators that can show a "verifiable threat", which can include death threats or kidnapping, or to those which can prove a specific threat via an independent security study or an overall security programme.
In the NBAA query, to which it received 535 responses, 54% of BARR participants reported that they would not qualify for blocking under the new interpretation, but that they had "a bona fide security justification for use of the BARR programme".
Bolen says many companies did not respond to the questionnaire because of concerns that their response might compromise security, or on advice of their legal counsel.
The FAA is taking comments on the proposed changes until 4 April.
The NBAA last year lost its two-year fight in a federal court to keep a list of aircraft tail numbers in the BARR programme from being provided to investigative journalism company ProPublica, which had requested the data after the "Big Three" US automakers flew in corporate jets to Washington to ask for taxpayer bailouts.
Source: Flight International
