National Airspace System Defense Program (NDP)

The National Airspace System (NAS) Defense Program (NDP) is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system that provides the Department of Defense (DoD) and other National Security related groups with the necessary information to support their missions. NDP systems allow users/agencies to vet the propriety of an aircraft to occupy certain airspace, apply for permission to overfly a restricted area (waiver), alert to unauthorized incursions, detect flight plan variations, and identify suspicious/missing/stolen aircraft. NDP consists of eleven subsystems; however, this Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) discusses only the Airspace Access Program (AAP) system and the Airspace Awareness and Detection System (AADS). The FAA owns the AAP system and provides a method for individuals to submit requests for waivers to fly aircraft within restricted airspace. The management of the waivers is a joint effort of FAA and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for safeguarding American airspace. The FAA manages the safety requirements for aircraft operators seeking to operate in restricted airspace, while the TSA manages the security requirements. AADS is a website accessible to National Security Agencies that consumes publicly available data from various systems and also includes Aircraft Registry and TSA data. AADS then correlates the various source data with aircraft positional track data to provide a complete situational awareness of that aircraft, its owner, its operator, and any other available attributes. It was determined that waiver letters maintained by the FAA are not retrieved by an identifier but by the event and are not subject to the Privacy Act. The FAA is updating the PIA, in accordance with Section 208 of the E-Government Act of 2002, to remove DOT/FAA 801, Aviation 81 FR 54187 – August 15, 2016 (since updated and republished as DOT/FAA 801 Aviation Registration Records). Additionally, the record retention schedule was approved since the previously published PIA. The AAP system collects the aircraft operator's and aircraft owner's name, organization/company, address, phone number, and email address. For individuals traveling aboard the aircraft, the AAP system collects the individual’s name, gender, date of birth, Social Security number, passport number, and country of issuance, city of birth, pilot certificate number, and pilot certificate country. AADS also collects aircraft ownership information, including the aircraft owner's name, address, and phone number.