Tuesday, February 01, 2005



Reassuring

Following the recent publicity about America's torture plane, I thought I'd do a little check on whether it has been in New Zealand. Air traffic control here is done by Airways New Zealand, a state-owned enterprise. State-owned enterprises are subject to the Official Information Act, so I asked them whether they had any information of the movements of aircraft with the tailnumbers N379P, N8068V or N44982. The answer I received today was reassuring:

I confirm that we have no records of any movements in New Zealand airspace (or in any other airsapce we are contracted to monitor) of any of the aircraft mentioned.

I would have been very surprised if the answer had been anything different, but it never hurts to check...

I'm now wondering whether any other countries have this interesting and useful intersection between state-owned air traffic control and wide-ranging freedom of information laws...

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