Seems like a strange way to go about it. Possibly 1000's of plane pining a satellite for no reason & being denied due to lack of contract. Surely it would just be disabled onboard to save wasting resources.
Strange to who? Others have use for that data. It is well documented that cell phones continue to send pings, printers print microscopic dot codes on every page, photos include dot codes on every image so apparently someone involved with the manufacturers has a use for this information. The power required to send a few bytes of ping data an hour is negligible given the power available on aircraft.