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Imagine flying out on a perfect CAVOK day to bathe in all that heavenly glory. Now imagine a few weeks later receiving a bill in the mail for a “landing” fee from an airport you, well, never landed at. Welcome to PLANEPASS!
Thou Shalt Not Pass
PLANEPASS monitors all aircraft operations and automatically bills operators accordingly—including, you guessed it, landing fees.
Vector Airport Systems is a small Arlington-based firm that specializes in aircraft-fee billing and collection services. If you haven’t yet heard of them, they offer airport managers a turnkey, non-contact solution called PLANEPASS, which monitors all aircraft operations and automatically bills operators accordingly—including, you guessed it, landing fees.
The system is mainly camera-based but uses numerous other data points outside of purely video to identify a potential victim, including but not limited to ADS-B, MLAT, radar, and flight plans. It combines all of this information to look up an operator’s mailing address via their proprietary database in order to figure out where to send the good news. The company even goes so far as to not only act as the airport’s billing infrastructure but also serve as their collection agency too. One-stop shopping.
Vector’s value prop is undeniable—airport managers can install their system, sit back, relax, and collect checks, all while reducing their overall labor costs. Obviously, Vector gets their cut in the process, but almost all airport managers who buy into the system claim they see increased revenue from greater fee capture. So, what’s the problem?
I Know Where You Live
One of the biggest objections to PLANEPASS is where Vector sources its data from—particularly ADS-B, a technology that was never intended to be used to collect fees. Yet, Vector is just exploiting a problem that already exists: ADS-B packets are transmitted unencrypted and thus can be read by anyone.
If you recall, the FAA tried to address ADS-B’s privacy deficiencies with both its Limited Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) and Privacy ICAO Address (PIA) programs. The former filters your data from the FAA’s official data feed, while the latter obscures your tail number through an alias. But the fact remains that anyone with an ADS-B receiver can access the raw data. In fact, flight tracking sites such as FlightAware rely on private parties to install ADS-B receivers to do exactly that, in exchange for advanced tracking capabilities (full disclosure: I do this). My guess is PLANEPASS does something similar to circumvent PIA.
One strategy to prevent Vector (or any third party, for that matter) from knowing your home address is to privatize your aircraft’s registry entry, which the FAA has just started allowing owners to do. I highly encourage you to take advantage of this option, but frankly, the damage has already been done. Sure, registry obfuscation will make it harder in the long term for third parties to know where to send the bill, but it will take time to have any real effect—outside of brokers, it’s not like airplanes change hands very often.
The Wrong Vector
If you read a lot of pilot forums like I do (I know, I need a life), you realize that a lot of the ire directed at Vector feels somewhat misguided. Yes, I understand that PLANEPASS can make false positives, such as an aircraft performing a low approach or go-around. And yes, I do think using ADS-B data is a clear perversion of the technology. And of course, yes, reading about their various paper threats of liens on aircraft over nominal landing fees seems over the top. I get it.
But all of that is missing the point: Landing fees are at the discretion of the airport manager (and by extension, the FAA), not Vector. If you really want to direct your pitchfork and axe, then I would first start with the airport manager who is imposing the fee to begin with—not the middleman who is just enabling it at scale.
I personally don’t know anything about Vector and their business practices. But whatever sin they’ve committed toward an operator is clearly orthogonal to your favorite airport’s fee structure, isn’t it? It’s like blaming the tollbooth for the toll. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Resolution Advisory
So, what can we do as pilots about all this? The AOPA has already spoken up
about asking the FAA to outlaw the use of ADS-B to collect fees. In fact, in the most recent issue of Pilot magazine (June 2025), AOPA president Darren Pleasance states in his piece entitled Aviation’s lifeblood, “ADS-B data should not be used to charge landing fees, nor should it invade a pilot’s privacy or contribute to frivolous lawsuits.” And then goes on ensure that AOPA will “get to the bottom of this” and advocates for airports to seek alternative forms of revenue.
That’s nice. But outside of legislation, I’m not sure how the AOPA is going to get the FAA to both regulate and enforce third-party ADS-B data usage. Moreover, I also think that without overhauling the protocol to have strong encryption baked in, it wouldn’t be a silver bullet anyway.
In the short term, however, your greatest weapon by far is simply not landing at airports that employ automated fee capture systems. If the cost to operate and maintain PLANEPASS is greater than the fees it collects, it becomes a non-starter for airport operators. It’s that simple. Of course, this can leave airports in congested areas in a pickle: Are they now forced to charge landing fees like their surrounding neighbors as “protection money,” or just absorb the inevitable added congestion costs? Don’t know. What I do know is that these kinds of fees—and the systems that automate them—are not going away. And that can’t be good for GA, any way you look at it.
Caveat emptor.
- ADS-Fee? - June 16, 2025
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- Know Thy EFB - April 11, 2025
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