Elon Musk and the teenager tracking the private jets of billionaires

A student’s Twitter experiment has revealed how “the super-rich are using their private jets and flying around like there is no climate crisis”. Jack Sweeney, the teenage coder behind the @ElonJet Twitter account, explains that Elon Musk blocked him, perhaps because the Tesla CEO was worried about how this will affect his green credentials. The Florida native and university freshman set himself a coding task to work on during the reclusive months of the pandemic lockdown. When he released his endeavour to the world it exploded in popularity.

His @ElonJet Twitter account has now gained more than 380,000 followers in approximately three months. Sweeney has given an eager public an insight into how billionaires live, and particularly how extravagantly they travel. His project also ended up aggravating the richest man in the world and led to the SpaceX boss offering the 19-year-old a less than lucrative proposition.

Novel inventions often come from the unlikely combination of two ordinary elements. Sweeney’s innovation was to take publicly available ADS-B data from aircraft transponders and combine the information with Twitter bot algorithms. The aviation enthusiast has now created 16 automated Twitter accounts that track the private jet flights of the world’s billionaires. The movements of most of the world’s tech barons are now covered by the young man’s algorithmic endeavours. The most popular is the Twitter account that tracks the daily movements of Musk.

Anyone can now check the @ElonJet Twitter account and discover the most recent movements of the man that could one day make humanity a multi-planetary species. Musk’s schedule is a busy one. Sweeney says the transponder data shows how the SpaceX CEO has flown to Germany and Hawaii on daily flights, or how “he has hopped between four different US states in a couple of days”. The daily schedule is fully revealed online for the public’s scrutiny, showing mostly short-distance flights that could be covered by car, causing Musk a PR problem.

Sweeney has also created Twitter accounts focusing on the air-space movements of the other tech barons, one for Mark Zuckerberg, one for Bill Gates and one for Jeff Bezos. The teenager has created similar bots targeting billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and the rapper Drake. He also informed me that he is now considering a bot that could track the private jet usage of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, a move that may frustrate the California-based duo’s attempts to cultivate a social justice and an environmentally friendly reputation. This Prince Harry Twitter page would slot neatly into Sweeney’s controversial series, alongside @ElonJet, @ZuccJet, @BezosJets and @GatesJets.

This intimate insight into the airport hopping habits of the ultra-rich has intrigued legions of Twitter followers, and mainstream news channels have also sent the young man a barrage of interview requests. In the past weeks, he has conducted an exhausting round of interviews with major outlets, such as CNBC and Fox News. The University of Central Florida student has also been contacted by academics, who see research potential in the data he has collected.

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The genius of Sweeney’s idea is that the workload in accessing the private jet transponder data and tweeting it daily is fully automated by pre-programmed “Twitter bots”. These pre-programmed social media algorithms are designed to resemble the accounts of everyday human Twitter users but are fully automated. They can tweet and retweet at scales that would exhaust the average human and have been employed for a vast array of somewhat nefarious aims. Twitter bots have been used to spread misinformation amid elections or false news about Covid-19 developments, or even bulk up the Twitter followers of certain political figures.

However, Sweeney has used Twitter bot technology to give us unprecedented, “day in the life” access to the people who largely shape the world’s economy. The men he tracks are all in the top 10 world’s richest list. According to an Oxfam inequality report released in January, the world’s richest 10 men have seen their collective wealth double during the pandemic, from $700bn to $1.5tn. Sweeney’s Twitter shows how busy they were during this period by displaying their private jet flights.

Wealthy travellers showed an increased appetite for private use during the pandemic, where air travel was off-limits for most of the world’s population. The airport-hopping activity revealed by Sweeney’s Twitter bots complicates the rhetoric from the likes of Bill Gates, who is one of the world’s most vocal proponents for immediate action to combat the increasing threat from climate change. In a contradictory move, the Microsoft founder is currently making a bid for ownership of Signature Aviation, a British private-jet servicing company that handles 1.6 million private jet flights every year.

Looking at a 48-hour period of flight-tracking data on the @ElonJet Twitter page shows the Tesla boss has a demanding schedule. His flight patterns reveal how he visits his going concerns in a multitude of US states. He started one day with a flight from Austin Texas, then stopped briefly in Hawthrone California, then crossed Arizona and northern Mexico to Brownsville Texas, then to Harlingen Texas, then a touch down in Houston, then back to Brownsville for a brief pause on his way to Austin, then over to Hawthrone in California, then back to Brownsville for another brief stay before landing back in Austin again... phew!

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A day in the life of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is much the same. The @ZuccJet page reveals how the master of the Metaverse clocked up thousands of miles in a 24-hour period. He went from Utah to San Jose del Cabo in Baja California, then up to Pheonix, Texas, and then back again to Utah.

Then we look at the king of online shopping, Jeff Bezos. In a 24-hour period, Bezos went from Seattle to Washington, DC to Denver, Colorado, to Van Nuys, California, then over to Burbank, California, then back to Denver, before returning to Seattle again.

The Oxfam inequality report from January states that the richest one per cent of humanity emit more than twice as much CO2 as the poorest 50 per cent. Sweeney's jet-tracking Twitter bots are drawing attention to the disproportionate impact private jet use is having on the world's climate. According to a 2019 report by Honeywell Aerospace, a single private jet flight coughs out approximately 40 times the amount of carbon per passenger as a regular commercial flight. And, a report by The European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) suggests the carbon footprint of global aviation is being primarily driven by a small group of the planet’s population.

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The report found that only one per cent of people cause 50 per cent of global aviation emissions. The outsized role played by the world’s ultra rich in driving carbon emissions is a consequence of an escalating habit of using private jets in the same way an ordinary person would use a car. One scan through the location and time data exposed by the flight tracking Twitter bots shows a pattern where billionaires are hopping in and out of their private jets multiple times per day for mostly short-haul flights.

I spoke to Andrew Murphy, Aviation Director at Transport & Environment, who argued that “there should be a ban on fossil fuel private jets from 2030, giving eight years to deploy renewable technology.” He added that, in Europe, MEPs are considering amendments to ensure private jet users are covered by the bloc’s Sustainable Alternative Fuels mandate. His organisation released a report that found private jet use has grown substantially in recent years. The study revealed that private jet CO2 emissions have soared, with a 31 per cent increase between 2005 and 2019. This is many times faster than commercial aviation emissions.

He describes the report as finding that “private jets are being used largely for short-haul flights, which is the most inefficient use of them.” He added: “Flying on a private jet is probably the worst thing you can do for the environment, and yet, the super rich are using their private jets and flying around like there is no climate crisis. The upside is that the private jet market is ideally suited to help bring about aviation’s Tesla moment, making hydrogen and electric planes a reality.”

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Sweeney came up with the idea of tweeting private jet flight data during the first lockdown in 2020. He told me, “I began working on it in 2020, I knew Elon had a jet and then I had an idea to track where he goes with it, the bot started tweeting in July last year.” He has now used his coding skills to enhance these Twitter bots and tells me that they will soon have added information, such as each flight’s carbon footprint. The student added: “The existing program calculates the flight time and landing and take off location data, but the bot will soon be able to calculate the cost of fuel used and the amount of tonnes of CO2 emitted”.

The carbon footprint of private jet usage is a subject matter that tech billionaires who pontificate about the need for low carbon lifestyles may wish to avoid. However, Sweeney does agree that in the case of Musk, his daily airport hopping across multiple US states is “the most efficient way for him to get around and if he could use electric power for these flights, he probably would.”

Musk’s gas-guzzling private jet flights are offset by the fact he has done more than most to transition society from carbon-based energy use to renewables. Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy through affordable electric automobiles, and soaring sales of his cars show he is on track to achieve this aim.

Many Twitter users have praised Sweeney’s efforts to bring us an insight into the daily habits of the world’s tech billionaires. But, he has also faced a barrage of threatening responses from Musk’s fans. The “really abusive” messages are reported and the young coder duly sees the Twitter accounts have been removed. “There are some on Twitter who don’t like what I am doing,” he says. “I get rude direct messages, but the really bad ones I report and the accounts are eventually taken down.”

After a scroll through some of the comments left on his Twitter accounts, he does seem to be igniting the ire of many. One Twitter user said he was “playing with fire” by taking on the tech barons. Another called “Dr Ghata” stated he was “passive-aggressively trying to extort money from Musk”. However, some Twitter users defended him, with one called “mafan813” stating that he is only “exposing the amount of damage people like Musk do to the environment on a daily basis”. Sweeney argues that he is doing nothing illegal. On Twitter, he wrote: “This account has every right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder.”

The young student was eventually contacted by Mr Musk, who was concerned the constant tracking of his flights was “a security threat”. He told me that he had an ongoing message discussion with Musk where the Tesla boss was asking him to take down the Twitter tracking bot. Sweeney said that Musk even offered him $5,000 to do so, then the teenager upped the price to $50,000, a piecemeal sum for the world’s richest man. But, Musk returned by stating that he “didn’t feel right” paying over the money. So the protracted conversation ended with Musk eventually blocking the youngster.

The computer studies student has also “monetised” his tracking data by developing a website called Ground Control that offers fans of celebrities access to information of where they are in the world’s skies. The website also hosts T-shirt merchandise with an image of Mr Musk smoking a joint, a reference to when he allegedly smoked cannabis on the Joe Rogan podcast. The image on the T-shirt is anchored with the words, “I know how high Elon is”.

Private jet flight by the world’s elite represents one of the biggest hypocrisies when it comes to every person’s responsibility to take ownership of their individual carbon footprint. Whether it’s the irony of world leaders taking private jet flights to climate summits or Coldplay’s eco-world tour that saw the band transit each venue via jet. The vast majority of the public are finding it increasingly hard to stomach celebrities and politicians pontificating about the need for real change to tackle the greatest crisis humanity is facing, while at the same time enjoying an increasingly lavish and carbon-intensive lifestyle. Example is the best teacher, and the age-old adage of practicing what you preach could go a long way in helping humanity move forward in unison to commit to keeping the planet’s average temperature below the 1.5C danger point.