Celebrity trackers.

There are a number of Celebrity Aircraft Tracking sites, both on the web and the deep web and there are probably sites on the dark web. I would like to start by saying that  personally feel that tracking a specific individual is wrong, but I understand that people who have generated an almost cult like personal following don’t really have a right to complain about people following them.

Celebrity tracker users.

Who uses these trackers, probably anyone who is interested in celebrities from their fans – some of whome may have an unhealthy interest, through climate actvists and probably some of these have an unhealthy interest as well, all the way to the generically termed Paparazzi. There are probably many others, who actually have a reason to track a celebrity.

Who is tracked?

The list of people tracked is really long, visiting the tracking sites I mention in this post will give you a view of who is tracked.  But you’ll have to do your own research, this will help you build a fuller picture. I would actually go as far as to say that it must be a bit traumatic for some people to find out that they are not tracked, so contrary to what they think – they probably don’t have celebrity status (sarcasm).

What is the problem?

In general the problem cited by celebrities is personal safety and security, something that everyone should look to but celebrities have to look harder and more diligently as they become more high profile they have to increase their personal security. It is part of their way of life, as you cultivate a greater following you need more security – so the simple fact of the matter is that the celebrities themselves created their own problem, if they want “people” to follow their lives. They probably have to accept that it will be the full spectrum of “people” and that will include individuals right across the spectrum.

These celebrities and wealthy individuals are entitled to feel safe and secure, but seem to at some point want both the exposure and the mutally exclusive privacy. The balance can be very difficult, but in some cases there are double standards applied that equate almost to a do as I say not as I do view point from some celebrities. In simple terminology, when using any aircraft not just private ones. People knowingly and willingly broadcast their positional data, anyone who has the correct equipment can receive this information and do what they want with it – whether the celebrity likes it or not!

What is the result?

At the moment, the result is the loss of more digital freedom for the citizens of the USA – but it should be noted that other governments are looking at removing this freedom through legislation. Put simply, any aircraft owners or operators can apply to hide the identity of an aircraft – but this only applies in US controlled airspace and currently for US registered aircraft. However in the future that feature may not just be restricted to the United States, or to United States registered aircraft.

What sites track celebrities?

There are too many to cover in a short post, so as with the previous post I’ll just cover a few just the top hits from a search engine to give an example of whats out there. There are also cross reference links which I’ll mention for the sites below, for any of the sites below – clicking on the image should take you to the site.

Celebrity Private Jet Tracker.

This is a simple to use tracker, allowing the information to be ordered in a number of ways. The focus seems to be around the carbon foot print of the celebrities, there is quite a limited cover of celebrities – but the fact that you can order the presented tables in a number of ways makes the site easy to use and the information easy to find.

A point worth noting is that there are a number of active links dotted around the site to other tracking sites, these I have not investigated. It is also well worth reading the Frequently Asked Questions page provided on the site, as there ia a weallth of information in the questions along with quite a number of links to other  sites.

Celebjettrack

I have included this site just to show the variance in the quality of these sites, this site simply displays a map with a small list of celebrities down the left hand side of the screen. It does offer a flight replay function, but in truth it is quite restrictive in the information it provides.

JetSpy

To me this is by far and away the most concerning of the sites, it offers tracking information on literally thousands of individuals, families, corporations, government agencies among a number of other classifications.

The site seems to look at a number of classes of private and corporate aircraft users, but what is most concerning is the reference to many high net worth people and their families – this must be a significant security concern for these people. These are not people who have cultivated a public following, they are people who in general have been successful in business or have inherited significant wealth, these people probably have no reason or desire to be tracked.

The one saving grace that the site has is that it charges a subscription, ranging from $24.95 for a single aircraft to $249.95 for everything so most individuals probably wouldn’t bother – the press may be another matter. Looking at the site does show an extensive Frequently Asked Questions page, where it mentions the LADD programme – stateing that the site does not take the FAA SWIM feed. It also mentions the PIA programme and the obtuse terminology used would lead you to believe that they will be unaffected, this is patently not true – they will be able to display the PIA data but not the correct ID of the aircraft.

So as you can see from this and the previous post, there are a number of sites that offer aircraft, celebrity, wealthy people, goverment agency tracking services. The sites in this post just scratch the surface, in the next post I’ll be looking at the celebrity trackers on social media.

Tracking Sites

There are a number of tracking sites, from the ubiquitous Flight Radar 24 all the way to the somewhat concerning JetSpy. For the average person with an interest in aviation, the sites like Flight Radar 24 are generally good enough.

Other sites have advantages, like they don’t take the FAA SWIM feed – so can display all the data that the aircraft transmits. This bypasses the restrictions placed on sites like Flight Radar 24. A typical example would be an aircraft not showing the departure and arrival airport, or some other information. In the screenshot below, you can see that there is little information available, this aircraft is subscribed to the LADD programme so the data displayed on FR24 is restricted.

To view these images at full resolution (they are simple screen shots), right click on the image and select open in a new tab.

If we now look at the same aircraft on ADSB, we can see that there is more information. Which is why when I’m looking at these web sites I will normally use the following site “globe.adsbexchange.com”, none of the tracking sites are perfect – there are sometimes reasons for using more than one at a time.

The above two sites are the basic sites that will suit most peoples needs, another site that I use that is a little more difficult to navigate and has slightly more restricted graphical interface is “opensky-network.org” which unlike the other sites does require you to create an account for access. When all three sites are used in conjunction, it is generally possible to find all the information that I require.

All of these sites will be affected by the PIA programme, as the actual aircraft will broadcast a fake identity – they will display only the data based on tracking the temporary ICAO Hex code. But for aircraft other than these they deliver sufficient information to identify the aircraft and its routing.

In my next post I will cover the sites that concentrate on tracking the private arcraft of the wealthy.

Tracking the Aircraft not the Person.

I’m pretty sure that most of us would feel uncomfortable if we were tracked, it is something that few of us think about – but potentially everytime we pay for something, drive past an ANPR camera or walk through pretty much any town center we are tracked. Online we are tracked, what sites we visit, where we were when we accessed the site, what time it was and we all agree to having tracking cookies and terms and conditions that mean that the data can be shared or sold. Sometimes by companies owned by the very people who are shouting loudly that they shouldn’t be tracked when flying in their private aircraft.

Many of the wealthy that have supported hiding the identity of their private aircraft are the same people who need the general public to follow them, which seems to be a bit ironic really. They have cited various concerns (mainly security) to sway the argument in their favour and they have effectively achieved their goal in the United States at least.

People like Jack Sweeny who seemed to have a fascination with people like Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg along with others and the Fleet of Government Jets used to ferry people like the President, Vice President and Secretary of State around contributed to the pressure for individual anonymity in no small measure. And the publicity that they garnered may well have been an infulencing factor in the decision making process, which is a bit of a pain for plane spotters.

In general, unless you see a person boarding a plane – there is actually no way of telling unless a characteristic like the aircraft call sign changes. Many people know that when the President is aboard any United States Air Force flight, the callsign used by that aircraft is “Air Force One” and Air Force Two” for the VP but you wouldn’t know otherwise.

Elon Musk has a personal fleet of five jets, again you are not certain he’s actually on any of them unless you saw him board. And to be honest who is going to stand at some perimeter fence for that, probably not most plane spotters. Most of us just want to say that one is new or it is old, I can never recall in conversation any of my spotting friends and aquaintances saying that they went to see an aeroplane because someone was on it unless it was family leaving or arriving.

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