The application is cumbersome and the effect is average. Musk may have abandoned this "stealth" method

On October 30th, it was reported that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States has launched the ICAO Aircraft Registration Privacy Program (PIA) to help well-known individuals conceal the trajectory of their private planes. Elon Musk also participated in this project

On October 30th, it was reported that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States has launched the ICAO Aircraft Registration Privacy Program (PIA) to help well-known individuals conceal the trajectory of their private planes. Elon Musk also participated in this project. But the latest news shows that due to the average effectiveness and cumbersome process of the PIA project, Musk seems to have given up using the PIA project.

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Tesla CEO Musk has been trying to avoid others tracking the itinerary of his private plane, and even forcing college students who track his plane to stop publishing real-time flight data on social media. The latest news shows that Musk no longer seems to be using a plan that can help him hide his plane itinerary.

Musk participated in a free program at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January 2022. This project allows private aircraft owners to use temporary aircraft registration numbers to hide flight trajectories, but according to data from aircraft tracking company JetSpy, Musk has not used this project since August 20, 2022.

JetSpy revealed that Musk has applied for a temporary registration number for his private plane four times. According to JetSpy's data, Musk's first private jet project using FAA was on January 25, 2022. Less than 8 months later, he applied for the project for the last time, only using a temporary aircraft registration number on one flight, and then using a permanent aircraft registration number again.

Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

When Jack Sweeney, a college student at Central University of Florida, began posting the itinerary of Musk's private plane to tens of thousands of fans on social media, people began to pay attention to real-time flight trajectories.

Sweeney stated that he does not believe Musk has completely stopped using jet tracking accounts like @ ElonJet. For example, Musk's private aircraft is still on the FAA's "Restricted Display of Aircraft Data" project (LADD) list. It is reported that the LADD list only needs to be registered once to prevent flight data from being displayed on flight tracking websites such as FlightAware or FlightRadar24 that use FAA data, but websites such as JetSpy that use independent radio networks to detect aircraft can still display flight data related to the aircraft.

Sweeney said, "For this project, it's possible that logistical support is troublesome, and the plane is not meant to keep you updated on the registration number." "This is a bit confusing. He really cares about being tracked. If I were him, I would say," Why not at least try to keep up with the situation

A spokesperson for FAA stated that the project was launched in 2019. Since the start of the project, 390 alternative registration numbers have been released.

Last week, JetSpy's data reported that the PIA project has been used to conceal the itinerary of 48 private planes since the beginning of this year, including the private planes of well-known individuals such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Taylor Swift.

Musk's public criticism of tracking his plane itinerary can be traced back to 2021, when he gave Sweeney $5000 in hopes of closing his @ ElonJet account. But Sweeney gave Musk some advice to apply to participate in the FAA project. About a month later, Musk used the first backup registration number through the project.

According to FAA, the PIA project allows aircraft owners to change their registration numbers every 20 days, but the process is quite cumbersome. Christian Renneissen, Cockpit Contact Manager at Collins Airways, previously revealed that although the PIA project is generally free, it is cumbersome to prepare a large number of application documents. More importantly, if the newly applied aircraft registration number is exposed and associated with the aircraft owner, the entire process needs to be repeated. For Musk's private jet, even a temporary registration number is easily exposed.

Sweeney stated that Musk's Gulfstream private aircraft frequently shuttles between the SpaceX launch site in Texas and the airport near California headquarters.

When you associate Brownsville with Hawthorne, it's easy to spot clues, "he said.

It should be clarified that private aircraft cannot use temporary registration numbers applied for through the PIA program during international flights. This may be a problem for Musk, who frequently travels around the world, as he took a private plane to Shanghai and Rome earlier this year.

In addition, hiding the aircraft registration number cannot prevent Sweeney from tracking the target private aircraft through the public flight tracking database ADS-BExchange.

At a meeting last year, FAA acknowledged that the PIA project cannot effectively solve the problem of tracking aircraft tracks.

The PIA project only limits the ability to use commercial receivers to identify aircraft in real-time, "a FAA spokesperson said. This does not affect people using other methods to identify the position and trajectory of the aircraft participating in the project