An embodiment of a communication management unit (CMU) includes emulator and data-mining circuits. The emulator circuit is configured to generate a data request having a same format as a data request from a vehicle communications center, to send the data request to a subsystem disposed on a vehicle, and to receive data sent by the subsystem in response to the data request. The data-mining circuit is configured to provide at least some of the received data to a determining circuit configured to determine information in response to the provided data. For example, such a CMU can request flight-plan data from a flight management subsystem (FMS) by sending, to the FMS, an emulated data-request message having the same format as a data-request message from a ground-based aircraft operations center. That is, the CMU can “fool” the FMS into “thinking” that the data-request message originated from the ground-based aircraft operations center.