Ottawa reverses order to block PM’s flights from tracking websites

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Less than three months after making the request to remove certain Royal Canadian Air Force flights — including the prime minister’s aircraft — from its online flight tracker list, Ottawa has reversed course and requested U.S. aviation authorities to cancel the blockings.

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The request from NAV Canada was made public Tuesday evening by aviation commentator Jack Sweeney, who posted an excerpt from a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bulletin requesting the removal of a number of RCAF callsigns from their Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) flight privacy program.

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Those callsigns include CANFORCE ONE, used by any Canadian military aircraft transporting the prime minister.

Sweeney is best known for tracking and reporting on flights by the rich and powerful — including operating the @elonjet Twitter account which automatically posts whenever Tesla CEO Elon Musk takes to the sky in his private jet.

Both the Department of National Defence and NAV Canada have been contacted for comment.

The LADD program allows aircraft owners to opt out of having their flight data distributed through publicly available ANS (Air Navigation Services) data feeds — the same feeds used by many popular online flight tracking services like Radarbox or FlightRadar24.

Sites that use FAA data feeds are obliged to filter their data against the LADD blocked flight database, but other popular alternatives — including adsbexchange.com — don’t use that feed and continued displaying RCAF flight activity.

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The original memo, posted online by Sweeney on July 14, requested a large swath of RCAF callsigns to be blocked — including HUNTER, MOLSON, ODIN, PATHFINDER, SONIC, VIMY and BUBBLY used by RCAF squadrons.

While officials cited “operational security” as the reason for blocking the aircraft, the move came shortly after some embarrassing flight habits of senior Canadian officials came under scrutiny by the National Post and other media outlets.

Last year, the Toronto Sun used flight tracker software to show Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shrugged off invitations to commemorate Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day, and instead used an RCAF Challenger business jet to quietly take his family to a rented vacation home in Tofino, B.C.

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Before it was eventually revised, his official itinerary listed the PM as attending private meetings in Ottawa.

In April, National Post reported the PM had flown nearly 128,000 km over the previous 10 months — with a little under half taking place in the seven weeks prior to the story’s publication date.

Earlier this year, the National Post reported Governor General Mary Simon and her guests racked up nearly $100,000 in on-board catering en route to Expo 2020 in Dubai in March.

September was a busy month for the prime minister, spending all but 10 days of the month travelling — a nearly week-long stopover in Vancouver for announcements and photo ops, the Queen’s funeral followed by the UN General Assembly in New York City, and several days surveying hurricane damage in the Maritimes. He cancelled a trip to Japan to attend the state funeral of assassinated former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe.

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The move comes one day after an RCAF press release promised greater security for some of its more sensitive flights — including limiting data available to online flight trackers.

“The measures applied to increase operational security will be used sparingly, and as always the RCAF will continue to work closely with our partners in NAV Canada and Transport Canada to assure safety of flight and navigation at all times,” read the Oct. 3 statement.

Ottawa-based research consultant Steffan Watkins, who with Sweeney operates a Twitter account that tracks the movements of the RCAF’s VIP aircraft, said the decision to block the PM’s travel was doomed from the start.

“They added CFC1 and others to a list maintained by the FAA that only applies to companies that feed off the FAA SWIM (System Wide Information Management (SWIM) feed,” he said.

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“ADSBexchange, SkyScanWorld, OpenSky Network, and others don’t get their data from the FAA, and don’t care what’s on that list.”

Most other world leaders — many of whom aren’t restricted from flying commercially like Canada — are freely visible on flight trackers when conducting official travel.

Watkins described the original blocking order as a “knee-jerk reaction” to the negative attention.

“That they thought it was a good idea to put these call signs on the list when Australia or the U.K. haven’t should make people ask questions,” he said.

“Why didn’t they ask their partner nations what they do for operational security before implementing changes that were ineffective?”

• Email: bpassifiume@postmedia.com | Twitter: bryanpassifiume