Thursday, June 18, 2009
After the embarrassing episode last fall when executives of the “Big Three” automakers got blasted for flying private jets to meet with Congress, General Motors tried to use an obscure federal program to block the public from tracking the use of its planes using Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) databases. This got investigative journalists at ProPublica wondering what other companies had tried to use the Block Aircraft Registration Request program to hide the tail numbers of their aircraft from public scrutiny, so they filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FAA.
The FAA informed ProPublica earlier this month that it would comply with the request and release the list. However, on Monday, the National Business Aviation Association filed a motion in federal court for a temporary restraining to keep the information hidden, arguing that the records should be exempt because they contained confidential commercial information that was submitted voluntarily.
ProPublica intends to fight the matter in court, and the FAA is on its side. Carol A. Might, director of system operations litigation for the FAA, says the list “is not a trade secret, nor is it commercial or financial information within the meaning of the FOIA.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Business Jet Group Tries to Block FOIA Request (by Michael Grabell, ProPublica)
Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) Program (National Business Aviation Administration)
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