Private Jets Belonging to Celebs and Execs Rack Up Years In Flight Time

You won’t find this celebrity footprint in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

An analysis of publicly available flight data by The Guardian showed that private jets belonging to a group of just 200 celebrities and executives have racked up 11 years’ worth of flight time since 2022, leaving a carbon footprint bigger than the Hollywood Bowl.

Comfy PJs

The private jet industry was supercharged by covid-19. Executive private jet use hit a 10-year high in 2022, and overall demand stayed strong through the beginning of 2023. The celebrities whose jets The Guardian retrospectively tracked represent just 0.5% of private jet flights over the same period.

Nonetheless, the stats are arresting. While the paper looked at planes belonging to Elon Musk (just remember not to tweet its location), Kylie Jenner, and the Rolling Stones, they were not the most well-traveled:

• The top three by distance traveled were the billionaire Blavatnik family, the Murdochs, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Given Schmidt is a keen lobbyist on matters such as cybersecurity and AI, it’d be interesting to see exactly where his jet has been landing.
• Of course, sometimes celebrities’ private jets aren’t reserved exclusively for those celebrities. In July a group of lawmakers from Luxembourg flew to an EU conference in Lithuania aboard a private jet owned by British electronic band Depeche Mode — complete with a red skull emblazoned on the side of the aircraft.

I’m the Problem, It’s Me: The Guardian noted that one celebrity decreased their private jet usage over the period it studied. Taylor Swift apparently dialed down her jet usage, going from 19 flights on average per month in 2022 to just under two per month now. Then again, maybe she can hitch a ride on the Kansas City Chiefs’s jet nowadays.