Why dont flights always populate FAA owner and type based off the Mode S code??

[NineThreeKilo]

So I recently bought the app, and a few things struck me as odd..

Obviously you have the mode s hex code if youre showing the aircraft, why cant it simply run that through the public FAA site and display a N number and accurate type and owner info? "Private owner".... come on now, the data is there, its free and its public, frankly this would be a lot more useful compared to many of the other cosmetic features.

Or is there a setting I'm not seeing?


Finally, I notice this app is hit or miss on blocked N numbers, it showed Bernie Sanders huge leased jet which was blocked (which he obviously didnt want to publicize due to his whole anti 1%er image), but on other aircraft it doesn't, as a professional pilot, and owner of a blocked tailnumber aircraft myself, the whole "they might encrypt the data" is hogwash, the system in already in place and the 2020 mandates ink is already dry, they aint going to be making sweeping changes.


But the big bug I see is not displaying the type and actual owner based on the mode S, I dont understand why that is??

[Mike]

It's hard to answer your questions without any concrete examples. Generally the FAA database and FR24 are quite different so we can't just import all the data. For example ICAO type is not available from FAA. The owner data from FAA does not make any sense to display as it only a mix of long names of trustees or banks, which 99.9% of the users won't understand and the names will not fit in the apps. In many cases we also get into privacy issues, so "Private owner" is just much easier.

[NineThreeKilo]

In the expanded view you could easily put the actual owner, most small GA planes belong to individuals.

As for privacy, that doesn't really make sense, you can just take the N number and open your browser and look it up in less than a minute, just seems for a paid for app I should have to do that.

Like I said, all public anyways
Since I can't post links, Google "FAA n" and it's the first link that will come up.