Perhaps it was a misunderstanding on my part. Were you suggesting the plane was reading the RF-tags the people carry? Because that's probably unfeasible.
No. Technically the rf tag range is much further than commonly believed - with the right gear. But that's not what I'm talking about.
Every phone constantly pings a tower. If you have bluetooth enabled, it also open the door for additional avenues. Including hardware mac. Same for wifi.
Planes like this have RF gear to scan broad swaths of spectrum and decode it. This allows them to monitor all RF activity. Which includes things like pings, calls, and even the esn, which allows for device cloning. Which also provides for the identification of the phone owner and corresponding call and text history.
RF = Radio Frequency
not
RFID
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