US Department of Defense plans to withdraw from public sale flight information provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) have provoked an angry response from the general aviation community.
The aeronautical charts and electronic databases provided by the NGA via the Federal Aviation Administration are used to produce low-cost GA flight-planning programs.
A six-month period for public comment on the proposal ended on 30 June, with the US Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and others urging the NGA to continue offering its aeronautical charts for sale until the FAA can provide the data. AOPA says the move will force pilots to subscribe to more costly commercial databases.
The comment period was invoked after criticism of the DoD’s announcement in November of the intention to halt public distribution of its worldwide aeronautical information. The main reason given was to avoid disputes with foreign agencies asserting intellectual property rights to aeronautical data supplied to the NGA. Denying the information to terrorists was also cited as a reason.
Industry insiders say the DoD move was triggered by a dispute with Australia over the sale to commercial providers such as Jeppesen of copyrighted aeronautical data provided for inclusion in the NGA’s Defence Aeronautical Flight Information File (DAFIF) – an unclassified worldwide database currently provided free to the public and widely used in electronic flight-planning programs.
AOPA says the FAA’s National Flight Database contains only 77% of the domestic US aeronautical data in the DAFIF, and the association argues that withdrawal of the NGA database would result in the loss of information on at least 9,500 instrument flight procedures and route segments.
Graham Warwick / Washington DC
Source: Flight International
