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  4. The man who tracks Elon Musk's private jet says he would stop if the billionaire took him on a flight and gave him an interview, report says

The man who tracks Elon Musk's private jet says he would stop if the billionaire took him on a flight and gave him an interview, report says

Sam Tabahriti   

The man who tracks Elon Musk's private jet says he would stop if the billionaire took him on a flight and gave him an interview, report says
Tech1 min read
  • Jack Sweeney runs Twitter accounts that tracks celebrities' private jets including Elon Musk.
  • The world's richest man previously offered Sweeney $5,000 to stop tracking his jet.

A 20-year-old who attracted Elon Musk's ire for running a Twitter account that tracks his private jet has said he could shut it down if the Tesla chief meets his conditions.

Jack Sweeney previously declined Musk's offer of $5,000 and a free Tesla, saying he gets too much satisfaction from tracking the billionaire's jet to settle for anything less than $50,000.

He told the Daily Star he would consider taking the account down if Musk took him on a flight and gave him an interview mid-air.

"If he let me fly with him on his jet, record it and talk about it - and maybe not even pay me the $50,000 [previously asked for] — I would take it down. That is still up for discussion," Sweeney told the newspaper.

Sweeney didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The account,@ElonJet, uses a bot to tracks the billionaire's jet through public ADS-B data. Sweeney previously argued that taking down his account "won't fix the issue, my code is open-sourced [and] others said they would recreate it anyway."

Musk is not the only person whose jets he has tracked. Tom Cruise, the Kardashians, several Russian oligarchs and even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates have all been in his sights. Mark Cuban is thought to be the only celebrity who has struck a deal with Sweeney to stop tracking his flights.

Sweeney told the Daily Star it was becoming harder to track Musk's jet: "His plane was in San Francisco for less than a day, but it was hard to figure out because this was one of the flights where he had PIA [Privacy ICAO Address, which masks the owner's identity]."

He added: "It's like having a license plate on your car that is registered to another name. It takes extra work to know where the jet is going."

Insider has contacted Musk for comment.


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