The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has created a system for personal plane house owners to request that their registration info — together with their identify and handle — be stored personal. That will affect celeb personal jet trackers, which have used FAA registration info to determine jets belonging to the likes of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
The new FAA system was mandated by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which gave the group two years to determine a process for plane house owners and operators to request that any “personally identifiable info” be made personal. The FAA says it’s additionally “evaluating” whether or not to go one step additional and default to maintaining such info personal. The act grew to become legislation in Might 2024 beneath the Biden administration.
The change will doubtless make it tougher to function celeb jet trackers, which use FAA registration info to determine personal jets owned by celebrities in order that their flightpaths might be tracked. Accounts monitoring jet use by Musk, Swift, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, and extra have gone viral prior to now, although have seen bans on platforms owned by Musk and Zuck. In 2023 Taylor Swift sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jack Sweeney, who operates plenty of standard jet trackers.