The US Federal Aviation Administration last week enacted a rule, signed into law last year, that lets owners of private jets request that their names and addresses be kept private. According to the FAA, this means ownership information wouldn’t be made available on its websites for public viewing.
An electronic request form has been made available for owners to use. The new rule appears to be, at least in part, a response to social media accounts that post air travel information about celebrities such as Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
As reported by The Verge, however, that may not thwart those who run tracking sites, who say they rely on other sources of information for their reports, not just FAA records.
Not much change?
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 tracking of flights 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.
David Gitman, CEO of Monarch Air Group, a private-jet charter company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told CNET the FAA’s new privacy control won’t do much to stop 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 it more difficult for trackers because different planes are being used at different times for different customers. Tracking as a whole, though, isn’t going to go 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.”
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