The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association sent letters to its members Thursday urging them to contact lawmakers in support of the Pilot and Aircraft Privacy Act, companion bills introduced as S.2175 in the Senate and H.R.4146 in the House. The ADS-B privacy legislation would restrict the use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) data to air traffic safety and airspace efficiency, while giving the secretary of transportation discretion to authorize additional uses.
The ADS-B privacy issue surfaced during a December hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.), the House sponsor, questioned how ADS-B data is being used.
“If ADS-B is being used by, I’ll say, bad actors to monetize airport landing fees, that’s going to discourage folks from employing ADS-B or adopting ADS-B in the first place or turning it off,” Onder said.
Reliable Robotics CEO Robert Rose also addressed the topic.
“I don’t think it should be used for fee collections,” Rose said. “It should be used primarily for safety and collision avoidance and situational awareness in the cockpit.”
The bill would attempt to preserve ADS-B’s safety intent while addressing concerns about non-safety uses. While the bill would not prohibit airport fee collection, it would prohibit using ADS-B as a means of collecting aircraft data for the purpose of fee collection.
“To be clear, the bill would not prevent airports from imposing fees on pilots, nor would it impede the use of FlightAware, Flightradar24, or other popular flight tracking apps,” AOPA President and CEO Darren Pleasance wrote in an email to members.
Some legal analysts have cautioned that efforts to further restrict access to ADS-B-based tracking can raise transparency and speech concerns, arguing that public access to flight information can serve oversight and accountability interests and that broad limits could resemble censorship debates around flight tracking data.
