In the wake of political unrest, celebrity jet tracking and a high-profile CEO shooting, business aviation owners and operators are beginning to take advantage of a new FAA policy that allows them to hide personally identifiable information from the FAA’s Aircraft Registry.
The change follows the passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which mandates the FAA administrator establish the procedure in which private aircraft owners may request that their registration details, such as their names and addresses, be kept away from public view on the FAA’s website.
According to Aviation Week data from the FAA, three out of 66 business aircraft delivered in April had aircraft owner information redacted from the FAA’s registry, citing Title 49 of the U.S. Code Section 44114. Additionally, based on Aviation Week analysis, owners of approximately 200 aircraft in service have redacted their previously available information, including information belonging to several Fortune 500 companies.
The FAA’s new measures took effect in March 2025.
The change comes as charter operators report that more of their passengers are interested in security and privacy.
“We work with a lot of political figures and former office-holders—a lot of those people travel with security,” says Gregg Brunson-Pitts, founder and CEO of Advanced Aviation Team. “But we noticed, industry-wide, more people taking a closer look at what they’re doing with their personal security, and even some of the family offices that we work with, we got some questions about how they could take personal security a little bit more seriously.”
According to Brunson-Pitts, the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson may have prompted high-net-worth individuals to reconsider how they choose to fly, whether that be on their own private jet or with a charter service.
“When they’re sending their information to us and they’re working with us, it’s only shared with a few people. When we go and we source options for them, aircraft options, we’re not telling the entire charter universe, ‘Oh, this trip is for the governor,’” Brunson-Pitts says. “From a charter broker perspective, I think that’s where we can be an advocate. So, if a client comes to us and says, ‘This is what we need for our mission, we need an aircraft that isn’t publicly trackable’ for whatever reason—maybe it’s for PR reasons, maybe it’s for security reasons, or if they don’t care. A lot of clients just don’t care.”
Thomas Flohr, founder and executive chair of VistaJet, agrees.
“I think more and more corporations don’t necessarily want to be seen with their tail number [when they fly],” Flohr tells Aviation Week. “Maybe they’re involved in an M&A transaction. Maybe they’re involved in a sensitive client meeting, government meeting, et cetera. Being trackable with your own tail number—this is what some of the competitors or these plane spotters are doing.”
Flying with VistaJet means clients are on “an anonymous tail [and] you don’t know the passenger list,” he says, so the customer has “total privacy that doesn’t disclose where you’re actually traveling to.”
The FAA’s new program, in part, could be viewed as a measure to reduce the tracking capabilities of social media accounts such as Jack Sweeney’s ElonJet, which regularly posts information on private jet flights made by high-profile individuals—in this case, Elon Musk.
According to Sweeney, however, he does not strictly use FAA registry data to track aircraft. Instead, he uses ADS-B data received on open airways from more than 800 contributors globally—something that is much harder to prohibit.
“ElonJet isn’t going anywhere,” Sweeney posted on social media, in response to news of the FAA’s new program.
Online requests for FAA’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) program can be made through FAA’s Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services (CARES) system, where aircraft transaction information has already been removed.
“This is going to be an element in getting between live aircraft tracking and the security complications that result from that,” Doug Carr, senior vice president of safety, security, sustainability and international affairs for the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), tells Aviation Week. “The feedback that we’re developing for the FAA is going to, I believe, address other elements of the registry that we believe would be important to consider, as well. And it should be no surprise that the Mode S and Hexadecimal are going to be part of that until there is a way to get between the ADS-B networks that are out there and the aircraft registry that identifies these codes—the tracking is still going to be important.”
In the coming months, the FAA is seeking industry feedback to revise and potentially expand data protections for private air travelers.
“The FAA will publish a request for comment in the Federal Register to seek input on this measure, including whether removing the information would affect the ability of stakeholders to perform necessary functions, such as maintenance, safety checks and regulatory compliance,” the agency says in a statement. “The FAA is also evaluating whether to default to withholding the personally identifiable information of private aircraft owners and operators from the public aircraft registry and providing a means for owners and operators to download their data when needed.”
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