The most-watched tail number in the world
Gulfstream G650ER · N628TS
N628TS is a Gulfstream G650ER — two Rolls-Royce BR725 engines, a maximum operating speed of Mach 0.925, and the legs to fly London to Los Angeles without stopping. Gulfstream sells it as about the fastest civil aircraft money can buy, and that is roughly true.
It is also the aircraft that taught a lot of people what ADS-B is.
Nearly every airliner and business jet continuously broadcasts its own position, altitude and speed, unencrypted, so that controllers and other aircraft can see it coming. This is a safety system, not a leak. Anyone with an aerial and a cheap receiver can hear it, and thousands of volunteers do exactly that and pool the results — which is where the map on this page gets its data.
In 2022 a student called Jack Sweeney pointed that ordinary fact at this specific tail number and published what came back. The account was removed from Twitter that December, shortly after Musk bought the company. The flights carried on being broadcast regardless, because an aircraft that stops broadcasting is an aircraft nobody can see — and that trade is not one anybody sensible makes.
Sweeney appears twice on this board. The other card is Taylor Swift's.
What we have actually seen: picked up airborne
43 times since we started
logging on 14 July 2026, most
recently 11 September, at up to
48,575 ft.
Every other jet on the board is below.