CEO of LVMH Bernard Arnault. Photo / AP
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, the world’s second richest man, from being forced to give up using his thanks to an army of flight tracking enthusiasts.
“The result now is that 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 $265 billion (£135b), told a company podcast.
While Arnault’s decision to abandon his aircraft may have upset plane tracking 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.”
The Arnaults are far from alone in using private jets to get ahead of the competition – or, for others, to get directly to a pleasant holiday location. Data company Wingx says there were 3.3 million 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 signed up as followers of 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, $88,000 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.
Rather than making its own judgements on which aircraft should and shouldn’t have their details blocked, he explains, Flight Radar 24 follows an American government list of which aircraft can and cannot have their details displayed publicly.
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). 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 aeroplanes must have a transponder aboard that broadcasts their locations: “If there is something to be gleaned, that information will come out via transponder tracking.”
Landed in Austin, Texas, US. Apx. flt. time 2 Hours : 40 Mins. pic.twitter.com/QGQlvztm6q
— ElonJet (@ElonJet) October 19, 2022
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 aeroplane in mid-flight can be bought off the shelf for a few hundred dollars.
“All these latest Twitter accounts are doing is using cheap USB dongles – about the size of Amazon Fire sticks, or sometimes smaller – with open source software and decent aerials,” he explains.
One plane tracking website, ADSB Exchange, uses crowd-sourced 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 aeroplanes, 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 aboard an aeroplane, 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.