FAA's Privacy Program for Aircraft Goes Live

The FAA’s Privacy ICAO Address (PIA) program went live late last week, providing operators the means to shield their movements from publicly available flight tracking. Separate from the Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) program that was formerly known as the Block Aircraft Registration Request, PIA is designed to address privacy concerns with the traceability that comes with mode-S, key equipment used for ADS-B. Mode-S transponders right now emit the aircraft’s ICAO code enabling people to track aircraft.

For now, the FAA is administering the PIA program, assigning an alternate ICAO address that is decoupled from the aircraft registration number at operator request. Plans are to shift that administration to a vendor, perhaps later next year. “The FAA felt very strongly that the program needed to be working, even if it was done manually, by 2020,” said FlightAware CEO Daniel Baker. “We’re really excited about the steps the FAA’s taken…in getting this program out. It is a very important one for business aviation.”

Baker stressed, though, that it is important business aviation operators understand what can and can’t be done under PIA currently. “I want to make sure no one gets caught off guard,” he said.

For now, the alternative ICAO codes are only for domestic operations, but industry leaders are hopeful that they will eventually expand to international operations.

Operators who obtain codes must do a maintenance change for their transponders to accept the code change. This maintenance action could range from a couple of minutes to one to two hours to prepare the transponders, Baker estimated.

They also must obtain a new call sign, which can be received from vendors such as FlightAware, ForeFlight, and FltPlan. “We’re very prepared for this,” Baker said.

Once the operation is ready with the new aircraft ICAO code and call sign, it will still be able to be tracked but will not be identifiable to the general public.

Codes can be periodically changed by operators to safeguard against the potential that they are identifiable. They also must revert to the original code for international operations for now. This means a maintenance action for each time—at least for now. However, talks are underway with avionics manufacturers on technologies to ease that process.