The FAA has extended the deadline one month, to June 4, for comment submissions on the impacts of preventing certain aircraft registration and personal data from public display on agency websites, including through current search functions and published reports. Removal of this data is intended to satisfy a part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 that requires concealing private aircraft owners’ or operators’ personally identifiable information from broad dissemination or display on FAA websites.
As part of its ongoing evaluation, the agency is considering whether to automatically withhold personally identifiable information from the public aircraft registry by default, while providing owners with a means to access their data when necessary. Since publication of the proposal on April 3, the FAA received a joint request from several trade associations, including GAMA, NATA, NBAA, and the International Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA). These and other organizations requested more time to analyze any impacts, develop comments and recommendations, and coordinate those comments among their stakeholders.
Of the more than 260 comments submitted to date, most are from individual general aviation aircraft owners and operators who overwhelmingly support the proposal. Trade associations are expected to submit their comments over the next 30 days. Because this extension provides a 60-day comment period, the FAA “will not grant any additional requests to further extend the comment deadline.”