Teen who tracked Elon Musk’s plane is now chasing jets of Russian oligarchs

Jack Sweeney, the teen who had irked Tesla CEO Elon Musk by tracking his private plane on a Twitter account named ‘Elon’s Jet’, has created another account to follow planes of Russia’s richest people – as the country continues its ruthless invasion of Ukraine.

The new account is named @RUOligarchJets, short for Russian Oligarch Jets, the 19-year-old informed in a tweet. 

Sweeney will be tracking planes of notable Russians including Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, Vladimir Potanin (the nation’s wealthiest person), and steel billionaire Alexander Abramov, according to Bloomberg. 

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The tech-savvy teen told the news publication that he created the account after receiving requests as Western countries unleashed multiple sanctions on Russia and its oligarchs after it launched an invasion of neighbouring Ukraine last Thursday.

“The aircrafts these oligarchs have are absolutely crazy,” Sweeney, 19, told Bloomberg, saying that Russia’s wealthy love to fly in commercial-sized aircraft such as the Airbus A319 and Boeing 737. 

“Their planes are huge compared to other jets,” he added.

Sweeney, a college student, first made headlines when he made the ‘Elon’s Jet’ account, which has nearly 390k followers. Musk had even offered him $5,000 to stop running the account which shows real-time updates of his jet’s locations. “How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me?” Musk had written to Sweeney.

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“Any chance to up that to $50k?” Sweeney reportedly replied, adding, “It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.” He was blocked by Musk after that. 

Speaking to The Guardian, he had said, “I created it [the account] because I’m really interested in Elon Musk, and Tesla and SpaceX – and it would be interesting to see where he goes and what business he’s up to.

The teen developed around 15 other accounts which were able to track the movements of other prominent personalities like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.