How to track private jets

What is ADS-B, and how does it work?

ADS-B is the radio signal that makes flight tracking possible. The name stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, and each word matters. Automatic means the plane sends the message on its own, without anyone asking. Dependentmeans the position comes from the plane's own GPS, not from radar. Surveillance means the message is a position report. Broadcast means it goes out to everyone, with no encryption.

About twice a second, a plane with ADS-B Out sends a short message. It holds the plane's ID, latitude and longitude, altitude, ground speed, direction and climb rate. In most of the world it goes out on 1090 MHz. In the United States, planes flying below 18,000 feet can use a second channel on 978 MHz called UAT. That is one reason a small plane can show up on an American receiver and not on a European one.

Carrying ADS-B Out is not optional. Since January 1, 2020, the FAA has required it in most controlled U.S. airspace. Europe and Australia brought in similar rules. Those rules are the reason flight tracking works at all. Before them, broadcasting was patchy and voluntary.

You don't need permission to receive the signal. A cheap software radio and an antenna will do it, and thousands of volunteers run receivers from rooftops and windowsills. Networks such as adsb.lol, ADSB.fi, ADS-B Exchange and airplanes.live pool those feeds into one global picture. So coverage follows people. It is dense over Western Europe and the U.S. East Coast, thin over the Sahara and missing over open ocean, where nobody lives to host a receiver. A plane crossing the North Atlantic keeps transmitting. There is just nothing below it listening. Good trackers say so instead of drawing a straight line and pretending.

Older planes with a Mode S transponder but no ADS-B can still be found by multilateration. Four or more ground stations time-stamp the same reply, and the gaps between those arrival times pin down the position. It is less precise than ADS-B and needs many receivers close together. In practice it mostly works over Europe.

Tail number vs ICAO hex code

Every aircraft has two IDs. Mixing them up is the most common reason a search comes back empty.

The tail number, or registration, is the code painted on the plane's body or tail: N628TS, G-SUGR, VT-AKV. The aviation authority of the plane's home country issues it, and in most countries it is a public record. It changes when the plane is sold into another country's registry. This is the ID people use.

The ICAO hex code is a 24-bit address written as six characters, for example A835AF. You may also see it called the ICAO 24-bit address, the Mode S address or just “the hex.” ICAO gives each country a block of addresses, and the national registry assigns one to each plane. Every U.S.-registered plane has a hex that starts with A. The key point is that the hex is what's actually inside the radio message. The tail number is not sent at all. A tracker finds it by looking up the hex in a registry database.

That lookup step is why a plane can vanish from a tracker while its transponder is still on. It is also the gap the privacy programs below take advantage of.

How to read a registration prefix

The first letters of a registration tell you where the plane is registered. That is often not where the owner lives. Many business jets use a handful of offshore registries that offer tax breaks, simpler import rules and less paperwork. So a jet that flies daily out of London or Dubai may legally be registered on the Isle of Man, in Malta or in the Cayman Islands.

U.S. registrations work differently. They start with N, followed by one to five characters and no hyphen. Owners can reserve a custom combination, which is why vanity tail numbers are so common in the U.S. fleet. Everywhere else, a hyphen follows the prefix, and the rest is usually (not always) handed out in order.

How to track a celebrity's private jet

1. Find the registration. This is the hard part, and it is a records problem rather than a technical one. The FAA and other national registries publish owner records. Company filings, court papers and news reports fill in planes held through holding companies. Celebplanes keeps a hand-built register. Start at the roster and open a profile. The pages for Cristiano Ronaldo, Mukesh Ambani and Elon Musk each list their registrations, home base and full flight history.
2. Open the aircraft page. Every tracked plane has one at celebplanes.com/tail/<registration>, for example LX-GOL or VP-CZM. It shows the live position, flight history, fuel burn and total CO₂.
3. Watch the map. The live map shows every tracked plane at once. Each one is colored by status: in the air, recently moved or quiet.
4. Check the timestamps. A marker is only as fresh as the last signal received. When a plane goes quiet over the ocean, its position is estimated from its last heading and speed. That is useful, but it is an estimate and should be labeled as one. Be wary of any tracker that never tells you which positions were seen and which were projected.

The type of plane matters too, because it limits what a flight could be. The aircraft pages list range, cabin size and hourly cost for every model on the register. A midsize jet with 3,000 nm of range that crossed the Atlantic made a fuel stop, whether or not the tracker caught it.

Why can't I find a private jet on a tracker?

A missing plane is rarely a sign of anything interesting. Four reasons explain nearly every case.

FAA PIA: the Privacy ICAO Address program

PIA lets a U.S. operator flying inside the country ask for a temporary ICAO address. That address is not linked to the owner in the public registry, and it comes with a third-party call sign. The plane still sends ADS-B as normal, at full power. But the hex a tracker receives no longer points to the registration, so the flight shows up as an unknown plane. This is the most effective way to vanish from a tracker, and it works because of the hex-to-registration lookup described above. PIA only applies in U.S. domestic airspace. A plane that leaves it goes back to its assigned address.

FAA LADD: Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed

LADD is older and much weaker. An operator asks the FAA to drop its plane from the data the agency sends to subscribers, and services that use that feed respect the request. It does not touch the broadcast. Networks built on independent volunteer receivers, including ADS-B Exchange and airplanes.live, never see the block in the first place. A plane on the LADD list can usually still be tracked. The FAQ and the methodology page cover both programs in more detail.

No receiver in range

ADS-B travels in a straight line of sight. At cruising altitude, a ground station can hear a plane up to about 250 nautical miles away. Past that, it hears nothing. Oceans, deserts and large parts of central Asia and Africa have little or no coverage. Satellite receivers close much of that gap for paying commercial customers. The free public networks are all on the ground.

The transponder is off, or the plane isn't flying

Pilots normally switch the transponder off after shutdown, so a parked jet goes quiet by design. Military and government planes don't have to follow the civil rules, and many don't transmit. A plane can also sit in a hangar for weeks of maintenance. From the outside, that looks the same as hiding.

Is private jet tracking legal?

Yes. Tracking planes from ADS-B is legal. The signal is required by law and unencrypted, and receiving it is passive. Republishing information sent in the open is protected in the United States and allowed in most other countries. Aircraft registries are public records for the same reason car and property records are: planes fly in shared, publicly managed airspace. News outlets, universities and environmental researchers all work from these same sources.

What the tracking data can't tell you

The data does not tell you who was on board. ADS-B carries a position, not a passenger list. A tracked flight shows that a registered plane went from one place to another at a certain time, and nothing more. Private jets fly empty to reposition, carry staff and family, and get chartered out when the owner isn't using them. Any tracker, headline or social post that says a named person was on a given flight has gone past the evidence.

Celebplanes tracks registered planes, not people, and every profile says so. Our emissions figures are estimates: flight time × published fuel burn × about 9.6 kg of CO₂ per gallon of Jet-A. They are not audited numbers. Real fuel use can shift by 10 to 15% with load, route and weather.

Private jet tracking FAQ