If there is one thing rich people love, it’s doing things that allow them to take advantage of their inordinate wealth. And if there’s one thing they hate, it’s being held to account for those things. So this new rule from the Federal Aviation Administration is right in their wheelhouse: a recent change to the agency’s rules will make it easier for private jet owners to hide their registration information, potentially making it harder to identify and track their movement.
Under the FAA’s updated policy, aircraft owners will be able to request that ownership information, including the name and address of the person in possession of the jet, be made private and no longer publicly accessible via FAA services. Jet owners will be able to submit a request through the Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services (CARES) to withhold registration information. And just in case the ask-out system isn’t enough, the agency is also “evaluating” potentially making personally identifiable information of private aircraft owners and operators private by default—no request necessary.
The change comes as part of a mandate under the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which gave the agency two years to develop a system that would allow private jet owners and operators to hide their personal information. The bill, which had bipartisan support and primarily focused on expanding the agency’s function and improving infrastructure, was signed into law by President Joe Biden in May 2024.
The update adds privacy for folks who like to gas up the jet and take off for a long weekend in the Galapagos Islands or wherever the wealthy like to vacation, but it will likely put a dent in the attempts to track the activity of celebrities and CEOs as they burn through fuel with disregard for its consequences.
Flight trackers enter the public eye every now and then, perhaps never with more fervent attention than when Elon Musk suspended the Twitter account @ElonJet shortly after purchasing the platform. The account simply published the flight activity of Musk’s jet, which severely irked the billionaire. At one point, Musk offered the account operator $5,000 to shut it down, which was rejected. The whole incident also gave us a very funny quote from Musk in which he claimed people sharing his flight details were posting his “assassination coordinates.”
Musk is far from the only celebrity who is likely happy to see the new privacy rules in place. Taylor Swift has taken significant heat over her PJ usage, going so far as to file a cease-and-desist against the operator of a flight tracker that logged her travels.
Celebs and CEOs have increasingly leaned on private flights in recent years, according to a 2024 study published in Nature, which found that folks with high net worth were increasingly using their jets for short flights. About half of all private flights were under 500km (about 300 miles), and emissions from private trips rose 46% between 2019 and 2023, according to the study. Similarly, a report from The Guardian found that private jets belonging to 200 wealthy folks made 44,739 trips in 2022, generating more carbon emissions than 40,000 average British citizens do over the course of a year.
It’s surprising that they’d rather not have that information made public.
