Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college student who was once banned from Twitter for documenting Elon Musk’s real-life flight, has a new plane in his sights: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
On Monday, Sweeney started a new Twitter tracker using the username @DeSantisJet that tracks the flights of the Florida state jet DeSantis uses for state business. This tracker, like the one he built to track Musk’s private jet, uses public information that air traffic controllers need.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Sweeney said he also plans to track DeSantis’ flights on other private jets as soon as they are identified.
Like Sweeney’s updated version of his Musk tracker @elonjet, the DeSantis Twitter tracker is reporting the traffic with a 24-hour delay. That delay is consistent Twitter policy changes have been implemented shortly after the company suspended Sweeney Musk’s first account in December. Sweeney’s Twitter account has since been restored.
Sweeney, who is a student at the University of Central Florida, tracks some of the private jets used by politicians, techies and celebrities, a list that includes former President Donald Trump; Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; and celebrities Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.
Like other accounts, Sweeney’s DeSantis tracker can be found on a variety of platforms from Facebook and Instagram to smaller sites like Telegraph, Mastodon, and Nostr. Musk’s tracker also uses accounts on BlueSky, a nascent Twitter alternative, and Truth, Trump’s social media platform.
Sweeney said DeSantis is “becoming someone people want to know.” The Florida Republican has been giving signs of preparing to run for president in the 2024 election, where he will compete with Trump and several others who have been announced.
The AP reported Tuesday that DeSantis plans to launch his presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces to chat with Musk Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the decision.