A handful of Florida airports in 2024 became the first in the nation to charge automated landing fees derived from ADS-B data. As of April, the practice is now prohibited statewide.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last week signed SB 422, which restricts airports’ use of ADS-B data to calculate or collect charges for landings, departures, or entry into certain airspace. The provision covers aircraft weighing under 12,500 pounds and operating under Part 91.
Airports can still use other methods to collect fees. But the bill’s passage is a victory for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and other advocates, who have warned that using ADS-B for revenue generation could discourage pilots from installing the critical safety tool in the first place.
That argument is particularly poignant as Congress weighs a broad ADS-B In equipage mandate under the Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency (ALERT) Act, a response to the Flight 5342 tragedy over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., in early 2025. ALERT unanimously passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in March.
SB 422 passed both chambers of the Florida Legislature after weathering multiple committee reviews. Florida now joins Montana, which restricted ADS-B fee calculation for aircraft weighing up to 9,000 pounds in May 2025, as the first states to ban the practice.
Efforts to overturn the use of ADS-B for nonsafety purposes have spread to other states—and even the federal level.
“If we have people making a bad safety decision to avoid rates and charges, that’s where I think the FAA wants to throw the penalty flag,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told FLYING in an exclusive interview for the magazine’s Ultimate Edition, arriving in June. “That’s not the intended use of ADS-B.”
ADS-B Question ‘on the Radar’
While Bedford did not indicate that the FAA is preparing new rulemaking, he said the question of ADS-B use for fee collection is “on the radar.”
Bedford called ADS-B a “critical safety tool” and said he would object to any use of the data that incentivizes pilots to disable their equipment. He said airports should be allowed to charge fees, but “how they go about that matters.”
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy echoed Bedford’s remarks during a February hearing, saying that pilots could be discouraged from installing ADS-B.
“ADS-B is a safety tool, and it should be used for safety, not as a revenue generator to charge general aviation pilots ramp fees or landing fees,” Homendy said.
Per AOPA, about 100 airports were using ADS-B to calculate and collect fees by the end of 2025. The group said in February that six other states were considering bills similar to Florida’s, including Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, which introduced a near-identical proposal in January. It added that its staff are in discussions with lawmakers in another eight states that are considering introducing legislation.
However, safety advocates have called for a federal rule to eliminate scenarios where a pilot faces different fee collection rules when crossing state lines.
“Ultimately what we need is a federal law that is applied uniformly across the country,” said Jim Coon, senior vice president of government affairs and advocacy for AOPA, in February.
AOPA and others, including a number of airports, have endorsed the federal Pilot and Aircraft Privacy Act (PAPA), introduced last year. PAPA would bar the use of ADS-B data for non-safety purposes nationwide.
Per AOPA, the provision could pass as a stand-alone bill or as part of another piece of legislation. The House-approved version of ALERT contains portions of PAPA that prohibit any federal entity—not just the FAA—from relying solely on ADS-B data to launch investigations into pilots.
“When the nation’s leading transportation safety expert, state legislatures, airports, companies, and hundreds of thousands of pilots all support PAPA, it’s time to address this situation,” Coon said in March.
