A 19-year-old who created a Twitter an account that tracks the location of Elon MuskRussia’s private jet is now turning its attention to aircraft owned by Russian oligarchs.
A college student at the University of Central Florida, Jack Sweeney has created a new account called @RUOligarchJets which is said to track the movements of various planes known to be owned by Russian billionaires, using bots to detect air traffic data.
Sweeney says he identified the bill after receiving several requests to track down Russian oligarchs’ planes.
He uses a list of planes that is already being tracked by a blog called Radar spots and created a new Twitter account that has already garnered 64,000 followers.
19-year-old freshman Jack Sweeney, who set up a Twitter account earlier this month to track Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private jet, is now focusing on Russian oligarchs
The account currently tracks 39 planes and helicopters belonging to 19 oligarchs
Sweeney’s account currently tracks 39 planes and helicopters belonging to 19 oligarchs.
“People have been asking me about Putin for a while, they wanted to know if they could follow him,” Sweeney told NBC. “It simply came to our notice then. I just decided that some people would be interested. I just didn’t think all kinds of people would be like that.
Some of Russia’s richest citizens travel on the same types of aircraft that are commonly used by commercial airlines, including Airbus and Boeings.
Their vast time allows billionaires to travel around the world on their private jets, despite sanctions being imposed to cripple them financially.
It includes planes owned by Russia’s richest man Vladimir Potanin, Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea FC
Sweeney, an information technology researcher, created the tracker using a program that analyzes public information from several sources to identify aircraft. A plane belonging to Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea FC, is tracked above
The Twitter account tracks everything from private jets and helicopters to commercial planes.
Before the start of the war last week, Sweeney said he knew very little about Russian billionaires’ planes or their planes.
“Before, I didn’t even know there were such influential oligarchs. They probably have decent power from what I understand.
“The planes that these oligarchs have are absolutely crazy,” Sweeney told Bloomberg. “Their planes are huge compared to other planes.”
These include planes owned by Russia’s richest man, Vladimir Potanin, Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club, and Alexander Abramov, a steel billionaire.
One of Abramovich’s planes landed in Latvia on Sunday while one of his helicopters took a trip to the Caribbean. As for Abramov, one of his planes recently landed in Abu Dhabi and another landed in Munich.
Sweeney also set up a second account, which also tracks planes registered to President Putin and other Russian VIPs.
However, he warns that the information may not be very accurate, as Russia has limited flight data.
Although the account can track aircraft movements, it is unable to provide any important context and it remains unclear who may be traveling with the flights or the reasons for the trip.
However, a Russian expert said authorities should use information obtained from Sweeney’s account to confiscate assets.
Sweeney also set up a separate account that tracks the location of President Putin’s plane
Vladimir Putin’s leading aircraft is the Russian IL-96-300PU, pictured above. This is a long-range wide-body aircraft
Sweeney warns that information may not be very accurate, as Russia has limited flight data
“They have to be revealed and they have to pay whatever price a country can get from them,” Howard Stoffer told NBC, who teaches international affairs at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.
Take out the tail numbers of these planes. Tell governments that these are the people they are here and let them do what they see fit.
Sweeney first caught the public’s attention after Elon Musk asked him to close his Twitter account, which tracks the whereabouts of his private jet.
Musk had previously asked Sweeney to close the account earlier in the fall in exchange for $ 5,000, calling it a “security risk,” but he eventually declined and asked for an internship instead.
Sweeney opposed Musk’s offer, demanding $ 50,000 instead, but Musk declined.
Sweeney created a Twitter account in June 2020 to track Elon Musk’s private jet
Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously asked Sweeney to remove the bill in exchange for $ 5k