Or they could choose to fly commercial like a destitute multimillionaire. The only reason this information is public is that they literally own the jet and the locations of aircraft in public airspace is required to be broadcast for obvious reasons.
Jets pollute and use a lot of finite resources. Tracking them is necessary for aviation safety. So making that info more public doesn't strike me as such a violation of privacy.
If Elon is concerned maybe he could just rent a jet as needed instead of keeping one all to himself.
Genuinely asking - what's the good reason why flying private aircraft is public info?
I believe it's only public by technological accident. A hunter taking his Super Cub out in Alaska, for example, won't have his information available to anyone except people who see the plane if it's not equipped with ADS-B out, and very possibly not even then if he doesn't fly in range of a ground station.
Private jets are required to paint 12" high registration markings on both sides of their fuselage. Owner data is public record, although often obscured by holding corporations. The data used to contain SSNs if you can imagine it.
I'm unclear what jet aviation risk we are equating to hazmat ground transport. It's not raining aluminum very often, and it's a news frenzy when it does happen.
Every time I read "private jets should X" I can only ever boil it down to envy or "because I have the right to know", which I personally don't agree with. I seldom see things like "transporting that organ to its transplant patient via light jet is so carbon intensive -- why not use passenger aircraft cargo instead?" or other more nuanced takes.
For some, I imagine the opacity is worth the frightful cost of private aviation. I don't know what it is like to have millions of fans trying to figure out where I am at every waking moment, and the very idea is horrifying. I don't think any valid purpose is served by knowing where <star du jour>'s jet takes off from or lands at, and I don't think anyone is honestly looking skyward to FL410 and worrying about an aircraft part landing on them.
From other conversations about this topic, I thought it was interesting that the congresscritter who advanced the legislation is from the Bentonville AR region -- and crafty investors have tracked Walton jets to figure out where the high-level Walmart business meetings are happening, then making inferences about upcoming stock-moving deals. I thought that was fascinating. Humans are crafty, and humans with means who want privacy will find it, despite any number of laws passed. It all feels like wasted whack-a-mole effort to me.
Knowing when/where a private plane lands makes it a lot easier to stalk the passengers of that plane.
This is of course entirely separate from whether such info was used against Musk or his family, or whether such a possibility is sufficient grounds for attempting to silence those who make it easily accessible (it's still accessible thanks to ADS-B for anyone with basic technical skills and cares enough).
A couple spring to mind, none of which is specific to private jets.
Airspace above the US is nationalized. It's managed by the government, which is funded by taxpayers. So they have a right to know who is doing what using that airspace.
Flying secretly (or at all) is not a Constitutionally protected activity so there's nothing inherently wrong with regulating it and denying something like this.
Either one of these is a good enough reason not to allow this type of thing in my opinion.
Well that doesn't answer the question. Figuring out who owns that particular jet, and or what it's license number is is not obvious. One more step down the line. How would a normal person know who owns "FALCON LANDING LLC". Point is, unless you read the ElonJet account, most normies would have a hard time figuring out all of this. Just because it's public information doesn't mean it's easy to find for normal people. That account is Doxxing, plain and simple. But you guys are welcome to keep defending it I guess.
I hope not. Unlike car license plates, if you own a plane what you're doing with it is very much in the publics interest to know, especially if you don't want people to know.
They can have their privacy while they aren't flying polluting multi-million dollar planes through the country and above our buildings.
It’s funny you say that- I assume all private jets are bugged. Too many important people fly on them. If DHS is recording conversations on buses, why wouldn’t they want to listen to the conversations of much wealthier and more powerful people?
There is also a pretty easy solution to this if you want privacy: sell the private jet and use charters. This is why Bernard Arnauld sold his recently.
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