Back in November 2008 the executives of the big 3 Auto companies lobbied congress for a bailout. The press destroyed them over their use of private planes to fly to Washington to beg for tax payers money.
The non-profit media organization ProPublica sued the FAA under a Freedom of information (FOIA) filing to make public all records of private Jet travel open. Propublica won its last suit in a February 2010 ruling.
http://www.propublica.org/feature/off-the-radar-private-planes-hidden-from-public-view-040810Among those that tried to keep this information private:
â– College booster clubs and athletic programs for the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi, who blocked flights to hide coaching searches and recruiting trips.
This case is not settled. If this data becomes public, and the real-time flight tracking sites are given this information so the world knows where a coach is flying to before he even lands, how does that change recruiting? How does it change coaching searches when a plane is dispatched to a city by a booster or university?
My guess is this could be a great equalizer. One way to "hide" is to fly commerical. Of course a group could send their plane to fly around empty to throw people off but that is horribly expensive.
Thoughts?
