FAA Finalizes Order Shielding Voluntarily Submitted Safety Information From Public Disclosure

The FAA finalized an order protecting certain voluntarily submitted aviation safety information from public disclosure, in a notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register. The designation follows a proposal issued in August 2025.

The order covers information provided through the U.S. Aviation Safety Team (USAST), a government-industry partnership that identifies safety risks across the National Airspace System. Protected material includes safety reports, risk assessments, meeting records and information about the implementation of recommended safety improvements. Information voluntarily submitted by non-FAA participants will generally be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Qualifying information may remain protected indefinitely. The designation excludes information involving possible criminal activity, intentional falsification, reckless conduct, substance abuse and certain other misconduct. The FAA may also release de-identified or aggregated information to explain regulatory changes or communicate safety findings to the aviation community.

In its notice, the FAA stated that the arrangement "offers the FAA a unique opportunity to work with the aviation industry to avoid incidents or accidents." The agency said participants could be reluctant to share sensitive safety information if it might later become publicly available. The order applies specifically to information shared through the USAST and its affiliated safety groups, and it does not replace any other existing voluntary reporting system, including NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System.

Voluntary safety programs work only as long as the people supplying data believe candor will not come back on them. Operators, manufacturers and other non-FAA participants hold exactly the kind of information that reveals emerging risk before it produces an accident, and a disclosure shield is the usual price regulators pay to keep that flow going. The FAA's own stated reasoning in the notice follows this logic: reluctance to share is the failure it is trying to prevent.

The exclusions mark where the protection stops. Criminal activity, intentional falsification, reckless conduct and substance abuse stay outside the shield, so the order protects honest reporting of hazards rather than conduct that would draw enforcement. The allowance for de-identified or aggregated releases keeps a public channel open for safety findings, though the FAA decides when and how that information is used.

The order is deliberately narrow. It sits alongside NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System rather than folding it in, which leaves separate programs with separate confidentiality terms. How much the arrangement changes participation in USAST work will show up in the quality of the aggregated findings the FAA chooses to publish.