American Airlines’ pilots union says Spirit’s data sale to Google could undermine aviation safety

The union representing American Airlines pilots is joining opposition to Spirit Airlines’ plan to sell its old data to Google.

After the budget airline shut down earlier this year, Google succeeded in bidding $10 million for its data, which the company said could be used to improve its products and AI models.

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots, filed an objection to the sale on Tuesday, saying more than 700 of its members formerly worked at Spirit and would be affected.

The filing said that in addition to disclosing the pilots’ “confidential employment and training related information,” the proposed data sale also “threatens to have a chilling effect across all commercial airlines.” It said crew members participate in voluntary safety and training programs with the expectation that the information they share will remain confidential. “To permit that information to later be sold to a third-party without ensuring complete deidentification and satisfactory confidentiality protections will serve to threaten the voluntary safety and training programs that provide the backbone of the commercial aviation industry in the United States,” the filing said.

The union called for the court to reject the proposed sale until concerns over the crew members’ data are “satisfactorily addressed.” Google has said the sale includes Spirit’s internal data and custom software, but not customer or credit card information, and that the data would be scrubbed of any identifying information.

The filing this week joins prior objections to the data sale filed by the Air Line Pilots Association, the union representing Spirit pilots, and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents Spirit flight attendants.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.