GM Asks FAA to Bar Public Tracking of Leased Corporate Jet
By John Hughes and Elliot Blair Smith
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.
“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.
Flight data show that the leased Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV jet flew Nov. 18 from Detroit to Washington, where Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner Jr. spoke to a Senate committee that day and a House panel the next day on behalf of a $25 billion auto-industry rescue plan.
Representatives at the Nov. 19 House hearing including Democrat Gary Ackerman of New York faulted Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler LLC CEO Robert Nardelli for taking private jets to Washington to plead their case.
“Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class?” Ackerman said.
Symbol for Critics
Critics of a federal aid package for GM, Ford and Chrysler spotlighted the exchange to attack the money-losing companies as undeserving of a bailout. GM, the biggest U.S. automaker, has said it may run out of operating cash by year’s end without government loans.
The Gulfstream jet was leased from GE Capital Solutions in Danbury, Connecticut, a unit of General Electric Co. After the plane’s latest flight to Washington on Nov. 25, and from there to Dallas, its movements could no longer be tracked.
GM also has seven planes in its own fleet. All were grounded yesterday, said a spokesman, Tom Wilkinson. Two are for sale and two are in the process of being listed for sale, while Detroit-based GM plans to keep three, he said.
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