PIA and Hiding an Identity.

So, after President Biden signed the new FAA bill into law back in May 2024. I’ve been having a look at the implications for plane spotters. We’ve become used to the covenience of being able to identify an aircraft if we can see it, by using various means.

It’s become easier as we’ve gained access to more technology, so much so that it’s become the norm that we can identify almost all the aircraft that we can see – even the ones that are great distances away. By using applications like Flight Radar and ADSB, if you can see it you can in the main identify it.

But the new rules may change some of that, by allowing the owners of aircraft to hide the identity of the aircraft – not from the authorities, but from the public in general, which includes the plane spotting community. Now this only goes so far, the physical markings of the aircraft can’t be changed – what can be changed is the electronically broadcast identity. Which means that any spotter close enough, will be able to read off the registration and identify the aircraft.

But someone at a distance and using the tools that we as spotters have become so used to, will at the moment see one of the 50,000 fake ID’s that the FAA has allocated for this purpose.

There has been quite a number of news articles about people – in particular Elon Musk and Taylor Swift, wanting to stay anonymous and I don’t see a problem with that. Even if I think that it is a bit hypocritical, in as much as they cultivate a cult following and then want to hide from it – because anonymity allows them to hide what they don’t want people to see.

As I’m based in Scotland, I didn’t think that this would really affect me – however if you read this article here  you will see that the inference is that this may not just apply to US air space.

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