One of the great advantages of private flying is already in the name: privacy. But the ability to protect yourself from prying eyes applies only inside the cabin. Social media accounts broadcasting flight patterns of notable names – including Tom Cruise, Kim Kardashian and LVMH chairman Bernauld Arnault, as well as numerous sanctioned Russian oligarchs – have collectively garnered millions of followers, with the Twitter name @elonjet garnering national attention after Musk himself the account blocked. The spotlight it shines on is equal parts geeky hobby, Gawker-level curiosity, and data-driven emissions shaming — and Arnault, at least, eventually had enough of the glare, selling his Bombardier Global last fall and switching to charter flights with private passenger lists.
And it’s not just business tycoons, celebrities and politicians who are vulnerable. Anyone using a private jet is sharing information transmitted through the plane’s black box. ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) technology transmits GPS coordinates, altitude, ground speed, and other data to air traffic controllers and surrounding aircraft for security reasons—but it also harbors dangers ranging from industrial espionage to violence.
“It’s like driving down the freeway and having someone pick up your license plate to see who’s in the car and where you’re going,” said Doug Carr, senior vice president of safety, security, sustainability and international affairs at National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). “This isn’t just about the lifestyle of the rich and famous. It’s about basic security and not being able to track people in real-time – which, by the way, is illegal elsewhere.”
LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault aboard his private jet between Beijing and Shanghai in 2004.
Marc Deville/Getty
The issue came into focus a decade ago when a CEO of a restaurant supply company who used airplanes for his business was stalked and stalked by competitors on the internet. Then there were the wounded veterans being pursued and picked up by anti-war protesters at their home airports. Martha King, who runs the King Schools pilot training academy with her husband John, had several unstable “fans” who harassed her from out of state. One showed up unannounced and threatened her. “Privacy sounds abstract, but for us it quickly became personal,” says King. “Now we are more careful when flying to unfamiliar airports.”
The FAA is trying to help. After ADS-B became mandatory in January 2020, the agency created several programs that allow jet operators to opt out of sharing tail numbers, thereby helping to disguise passengers’ identities. Many private owners have signed up for the Limited Aircraft Display Data (LADD) program, but sources that do not use FAA data are not required to comply with these restrictions and can still publish the information broadcast by a jet’s transponder.
The FAA has attempted to fill this gap by providing a way to temporarily obfuscate a jet’s tail number through the Privacy International Civil Aviation Organization (PIA) address program. However, joining the program is significantly more complicated than signing up for LADD, requiring physical transponder changes and temporary callsigns — and if it’s the latter, “you’d probably have to routinely change that code.” says Heidi Williams, director of air traffic services for the NBAA. Also, the new codes will not be recognized outside US airspace.
As we’ve seen from broader celebrity culture, given enough public interest, trackers will find a way — the FAA, for example, can’t stop enthusiasts or paparazzi from physically watching jet traffic at a local airport and then doing those dick numbers divide . Spokeswoman Tammy L. Jones says the agency is expanding the PIA for US-registered aircraft into FAA-managed international airspace, but that no mechanism currently exists to encrypt secondary surveillance and communications technology, and that amending the next ADS-B -Generation A could be a decade away.
Meanwhile, the NBAA is in talks with trade associations in Canada and the European Union, which account for 40 percent of global business aviation activity, to create an international PIA-like program. But universal rollout would require “a conversation in all parts of the world about what this program means and how it would interact with air traffic control systems,” says Carr. All of this leaves pilots like John King, whose wife was physically endangered, frustrated, angry and wondering, “Why should we have to give up our privacy when boarding a plane?”
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