Owners of private jets can now request that their names and addresses be kept private, thanks to a rule enacted last week by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which was signed into law last year. According to the FAA, ownership information wouldn’t be publicly available on its websites.
The new rule appears to be partly in response to social media accounts that post air travel information about celebrities such as Elon Musk and Taylor Swift, which has faced criticism in the past due to privacy concerns. Those accounts had also allowed people to post info in the past on who the biggest carbon offenders in private jet usage were.
An electronic request form has been made available for owners to make their private jetting more private.
However, this may not thwart those who run tracking sites, as reported earlier by The Verge, who say they rely on other sources of information for their reports — not just FAA records.
Private jet privacy: not much change?
David Gitman, CEO of Monarch Air Group, a private jet charter company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told CNET that the FAA’s new privacy control will not prevent flight trackers from posting about the comings and goings of notable people.
“There is no material change,” Gitman said. “The FAA ruling allows the aircraft owner to block the ownership information, not the actual tracking of the aircraft. Most aircraft are not owned by the individual, but rather by a corporation or a trust.”
Gitman said that because high-profile people are often photographed arriving and departing on planes and those photos end up on social media, it isn’t hard to track them.
“Once an aircraft is connected to a person, it becomes easier to track, as nothing has changed on that side,” he said.
Gitman said private charters like his can make tracking more difficult for trackers because different planes are being used at different times for different customers. However, tracking as a whole isn’t going away.
“In my opinion, aircraft tracking is a given fact, a modern reality, just like the paparazzi stalking celebrities outside of restaurants,” Gitman said. “Any aircraft movement, from Taylor Swift to strategic bombers, is available online.”
Daniel Findley, associate director at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University, said that the FAA move is not likely to affect people in his field or other research areas where flight tracking is done since occupants are not the focus.
“For the vast majority of people who track flights, who owns the plane or who is on it is not as important,” Findley said.
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