How the rich and famous are being tracked flying around the world
The rich and famous insist that private jets, which can emit up to two tonnes of CO2 every hour, are a necessary “work tool”. But that didn’t stop Bernard Arnault from being forced to give up using his thanks to flight tracking enthusiasts.
“Now no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes,” the Louis Vuitton boss, who is worth more than $150bn (£135bn), told a company podcast.
While Arnault’s decision to abandon his aircraft may have upset planetracking enthusiasts, it shows how technology has made it trivially easy to track almost anyone.
Antoine Arnault, son of Bernard and Louis Vuitton’s PR director, said: “We haven’t found anything better than a private plane to win that race every day and be just a small step ahead of our competitors.”
Data company Wingx says there were 3.3m private jet flights last year, while other estimates say there were around 22,000 private jets registered around the world in 2019.
As the world’s second-richest person, Arnault’s movements are of interest to many, including the 37,000 people who follow the Twitter account @LAvionDeBernard. Arnault isn’t alone in wanting to discourage easy sharing of information about his flights. Earlier this year, Elon Musk offered Jack Sweeney, a teenager running a similar account, $50,000 (£44,986) to stop tweeting his movements.
“I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase,” Musk wrote to Sweeney in a private message. Other celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, Taylor Swift and Mark Zuckerberg have had their whereabouts revealed online using flight tracking software. Getting an aircraft removed from flight tracking apps isn’t as simple as complaining to the operator, according to Ian Petchenik, spokesman of plane tracking site Flight Radar 24.
Flight Radar 24 follows an American government list of which aircraft can and cannot have their details displayed publicly, he says.
Private jet operators wanting to hide their aircraft’s details from Flight Radar 24 and similar websites must apply to the US Federal Aviation Authority. FAA officials maintain a list called Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed, or LADD.
“Generally speaking, it applies mainly to aircraft registered in the US,” says Petchenik. “But it can include operators from all over the world.”
Steffan Watkins, an open-source intelligence expert who specialises in tracking and logging aircraft movements, says the LADD list is only a partial solution. Owning a private jet is as good as publicly sharing your travel itinerary, he says, because international aviation rules say civil aircraft must have a transponder aboard that broadcasts their locations: “If there is something to be gleaned, that information will come out via transponder tracking.”
While the transponder signal is intended for air traffic controllers, enthusiasts can set up systems to receive these radio broadcasts too – and the LADD list doesn’t apply to them.
Alan Turnbull, editor of the Secret Bases website and a flight tracking enthusiast, explains that the equipment needed to track an aircraft in midflight can be bought off the shelf for a few hundred pounds.
“All these latest Twitter accounts are doing is using cheap USB dongles – about the size of Amazon firesticks, or sometimes smaller – with open-source software and decent aerials,” he explains.
One plane-tracking website, ADSB Exchange, uses crowdsourced signals to generate a very similar display to Flight Radar 24 – except this one sometimes shows aircraft that aren’t displayed by its rival.
A simpler option for keeping out of the public eye is to sign up to one of the membership-based airlines that operates executive-grade aircraft to order. The amount of information available on such flights matches those of owners’ personal aircraft, however.
Retired NetJets pilot Mike Jenvey says security fears had sometimes played on his mind when carrying certain passengers.
“For some royalty and high net worth individuals, there’s always the risk of someone looking out for them in particular countries and locations,” Captain Jenvey says. “If you use certain apps, you can download the exact flight plan. Very handy for nasty purposes.”
No matter who’s on board an aircraft, it seems no amount of money or power can stand in the way of an enthusiast with a radio aerial and an internet connection.
Unless, that is, you abandon the exclusivity of private aviation and rent or share a jet with others.
Enthusiasts have the tech to spy in the sky unless, like Arnault, you rent a plane, says Gareth Corfield
‘If you use certain apps, you can download the exact flight plan. Very handy for nasty purposes’