Blocking tail numbers

if you have your tail number blocked so others cannot locate your aircraft, with a code can than yourself or someone with the code track the blocked aircraft?

flightaware.com/commercial/unblock.rvt

If you are the owner or operator of an aircraft with a blocked identification that prefers to keep the tail number blocked for privacy reasons but would like to personally be able to use FlightAware to access the aircraft’s status and history, FlightAware offers selective unblocking basis so that you can maintain complete privacy and anonymity while selectively choosing friends, family, employees, and business associates that you allow to track your aircraft’s movements with a username and password

So who is blocking the AC? Flight Aware or the FAA? If I get the raw data from the FAA like FA does will ALL AC be there?

The aircraft owner has the choice of being blocked at the FAA or by the vendors (like FlightAware). The latter allows for services like selective unblocking, where the owner and associates can track the aircraft.

I was told that a local jet owner paid FA $700.00 to block his acft. I argued that FA did not charge, It was the NBAA and FAA. I guess I was wrong!

Neither FlightAware, the FAA, or the NBAA charge any amount for blocking an aircraft. FlightAware does offer a selective unblocking service for $720.

That would be true if you had any idea what you were talking about. FlightAware’s selective unblocking product is a sophisticated enterprise product that has multiple full time people managing customer accounts and developing/maintaining the infrastructure to support access control, delegation, encryption, API integration, third party access, and more.

Can you tell me if it is the FAA or FA that is blocking N492JT? :smiley:

I recognize that your understanding of business is a bit limited, but are you aware that (as another example), the cost of operating an airplane is more than just the salary of the crew onboard the plane?

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Haven’t you learned Daniel that RobK knows EVERYTHING there is to know about anything? Either that or he just loves to argue about anything to anyone that disagrees with him. However, with the lack of emoticons that have been in the posts on this thread, I am wondering if it is really even him…

RobK, you shock me. Even among this crowd, you stand out for arguing and pestering and bitching as though you had paid for the service, or owned it. Surely you knew dbaker is a FA administrator and FA CEO. Do you commonly argue with and contradict businessmen regarding the internals of their own business? Unless you had once been an employee of FA and personally managed blocked tail numbers, you’re a jackass to say what you did. :confused: IMO now would be a good time for you to apologize.

You also seem unaware of the difference between cost and price. The cost is the actual expense of providing a service or product. The price is whatever you charge for it. FA’s price is $720, and it’s entirely up to them; you and I have no standing to argue with it. The customer has a simple choice: pay or don’t pay. If FA is satisfied with sales volume and with the difference between price and cost, then it’s a good price. Period. Any theories you have about FA’s cost are both uninformed and irrelevant.

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Ooooh, I love a good controversy.

I have to admit the quoted price seemed to me to be excessive on the face of it.

Without knowing the database structure, and we have seen some hints of complexity in it, unblocking a single tail number for a single user looks simple enough (the ‘offensive’ 30 seconds) unless the code has to be patched or repeated every single time.

It’s obviously proprietary information, but I do wonder how many owners have availed themselves of the service at that price. Why wouldn’t you know where your plane is anyway ?

Wow… and all I did was ask a simple question… :frowning:

Eh, you’re good. RobK just has a reputation for bitching about anything and everything when it comes to this site. Well, I will give him a little credit. He only does it about 98% of the time.

It’s not just the owners and not just for the current location - even in the case of a single owner who is the primary occupant they want their pilots to have access (alerts with expected routes, etc), their secretary and business partners (arrival times, delays, etc), their significant others, their maintenance supervisor (tracking approximate flight hours), etc.