[love to planefags - no homo]

Ottawa asks FAA to block military planes — including PM and GG flights — from flight trackers

29m ago

Citing security concerns, the Canadian government has asked U.S. civil aviation authorities to filter Canadian military flights from popular online flight tracking services, a move that has complicated — but not eliminated — the ability to track the prime minister’s flight habits.

Department of National Defence Spokesperson Daniel Le Bouthillier told National Post the Royal Canadian Air Force began exploring blocking their flights in the spring, and has since worked with other government agencies and NAV Canada to consider options. Despite RCAF flights already being blocked by popular online flight tracking services, he maintained no firm decision has been made to make the request official government policy.

But an excerpt from a letter to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) posted to Twitter by @elonjet founder Jack Sweeney shows NAV Canada — the privately-run, not-for-profit civil aviation agency responsible for Canada’s air traffic and navigation services — requesting a number of military callsigns be added to the FAA’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) flight privacy program .

“NAV Canada is working to improve operational security of some of their sensitive flight data,” read the excerpt.

“NAV Canada is pursuing additional options, but has requested several callsign combinations to be added to the LADD filter file.”

LADD is one of two programs run by the FAA that allow aircraft owners to opt out of having their flight data distributed through publicly available ANS (Air Navigation Services) data feeds.

Online flight tracking services who make use of FAA-provided flight data are obligated to comply with the LADD filter file as a condition of use.

The memo included eleven Canadian Forces aircraft callsigns and flight number ranges requested to be filtered out — including HUNTER, MOLSON, ODIN, PATHFINDER, SONIC, VIMY and BUBBLY used by RCAF squadrons.

At the top of that list is the CANFORCE callsign, used for most Canadian Forces flights, including those carrying the prime minister (CANFORCE ONE) and Governor General (CANFORCE 3701.)

FAA spokesperson Brittany Trotter declined comment, saying they don’t discuss interactions with other governments.

Despite the blocks already appearing to have been put in place, Le Bouthillier maintains the initiative is still in an “exploratory state” and no decisions were made.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/ottawa-asks-faa-to-block-military-planes-%E2%80%94-including-pm-and-gg-flights-%E2%80%94-from-flight-trackers/ar-AAZPwsZ