Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walks towards his plane in Ottawa as he departs on a 10-day international trip on Tuesday, June 21, 2022.

Less than three months after requesting the removal of some Royal Canadian Air Force flights – including the Prime Minister’s aircraft – from the online flight tracking list, Ottawa reversed course and asked U.S. aviation authorities to lift the bans.

The request submitted by NAV Canada was announced Tuesday evening by aviation commentator Jack Sweeney, who posted an excerpt from a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bulletin demanding the removal of several RCAF callsigns from the Limiting Aircraft Data Display (LADD) privacy program.

 These callsigns include CANFORCE ONE, used by any Canadian military aircraft transporting the Prime Minister. Both the Department of National Defence and NAV Canada were contacted for comment. The LADD program allows aircraft owners to opt out of sharing their flight data through publicly available ANS (Air Navigation Services) data feeds – the same feeds used by many popular online flight tracking services like Radarbox or FlightRadar24.

Sites that use FAA data feeds are required to filter their data against the LADD blocked flight database, but other popular alternatives – including adsbexchange.com – do not use this feed and continue to display RCAF flight activity.

The original memo, posted online by Sweeney on July 14, requested the blocking of a large group of RCAF callsigns – including HUNTER, MOLSON, ODIN, PATHFINDER, SONIC, VIMY, and BUBBLY used by RCAF squadrons. While officials cited "operational security" as the reason for banning the aircraft, the move came shortly after some awkward flying habits of senior Canadian officials came under scrutiny by the National Post and other media.

Minister Justin Trudeau ignored calls to observe Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, instead using the RCAF Challenger business jet to quietly take his family to a rented holiday home in Tofino, British Columbia. Before eventually being edited, the official flight itinerary listed the Prime Minister as attending private meetings in Ottawa.

In April, the National Post reported that the Prime Minister had flown nearly 128,000 km over the past ten months – with just under half of that in the seven weeks prior to the story’s publication. Earlier this year, the National Post reported that Governor General Mary Simon and her guests had racked up nearly $100,000 in in-flight catering on their way to Expo 2020 in Dubai in March. September was a busy month for the Prime Minister, spending every day of the month except 10 days traveling – nearly a week’s stop in Vancouver for announcements and photo ops, the Queen’s funeral followed by the UN General Assembly in New York City, and several days surveying hurricane damage in the Maritimes.

He cancelled a trip to Japan to attend the official funeral of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated. This move came a day after an RCAF press release promised more security measures for some of its most sensitive flights – including limiting the data available for online flight tracking. "The measures implemented to enhance operational security will be used judiciously, and, as always, the Royal Canadian Air Force will continue to work closely with our partners at NAV Canada and Transport Canada to ensure aviation safety and navigation at all times."

" as stated in the October 3 release. Stefan Watkins, a research fellow in Ottawa who runs a Twitter account with Sweeney tracking the RCAF VIP aircraft movements, said the decision to bar the Prime Minister’s travel was doomed from the start. "They added CFC1 and others to a list maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that only applies to carriers feeding from the FAA’s System Wide Information Management (SWIM) system," he said. "ADSBexchange, SkyScanWorld, OpenSky Network, and others do not get their data from the FAA, and they don’t care what is on that list."

Most other world leaders – many of whom are unrestricted from traveling for business purposes like Canada – can be freely seen on flight trackers when making official trips.

Edited by: Yusra Bamtraf