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GM calls for bar on jet tracking

WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) - General Motors Corp. (GM), criticised by US 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 on November 18 from Detroit to Washington, where CEO 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 November 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?" Mr. Ackerman said.

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 US 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 November 25, and from there to Dallas, its movements could no longer be tracked.

An FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said she could not immediately determine whether her agency had granted GM's flight-privacy request. "We do this routinely" for aircraft owners, she said on Wednesday. "They don't have to have a reason" for requesting the block, she said.

The FAA tracking data does not identify who is aboard the flights.

GM also has seven planes in its own fleet. All were grounded on Wednesday, 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.

The leased Gulfstream has made 10 trips to Washington this year, including three since October, according to data compiled by Houston-based flight-tracking service FlightAware.com.

GM said it often sub-leases the airplane to other users. GM officials said company employees were not aboard the jet on the final November 25 flights before its movements ceased being tracked.