At press time, the FAA had received nearly 700 comments on its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to dramatically curtail the Block Aircraft Registration Request (Barr) program. The comment period officially ended on April 4, but comments continue to be accepted on the public docket.
Barr allows general aviation aircraft owners to opt out of having their flight information publicly available at real-time, online flight-tracking providers such as FlightAware. As proposed, the FAA’s changes to this program, which was established by Congress in 2000, would effectively limit the program’s privacy protection to only those aircraft owners with a known and specific security threat. Broad security concerns–including corporate espionage, threats that do not yet meet the standards required to issue restraining orders or well known people who just don’t want to be hounded by the public while traveling privately–would not be covered under this proposal.
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