Private jet flights 'used like taxis' driving up climate-heating emissions

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed.

The assessment tracked more than 25,000 private jets and almost 19m flights between 2019 and 2023. It found almost half the jets travelled less than 500km and 900,000 were used “like taxis” for trips of less than 50km. Many flights were for holidays, arriving in sunny locations in the summertime. The Fifa World Cup in Qatar in 2022 attracted more than 1,800 private flights.

Private flights, used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, are the most polluting form of transport. The researchers found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO₂ emissions in an hour than the average person did in a year.

The US dominated private jet travel, representing 69% of flights, and Canada, the UK and Australia were all in the top 10. A private jet takes off every six minutes in the UK. The total emissions from private jet flights in 2023 were more than 15m tonnes, more than the 60 million people of Tanzania emitted.

Industry expectations are that another 8,500 business jets will enter service by 2033, far outstripping efficiency gains and indicating that private flight emissions will rise even further. The researchers said their work highlighted the vast global inequality in emissions between wealthier and poorer people, and that tackling the emissions of the wealthy minoritywas critical to ending global heating.

Prof Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the research, said: “The wealthy are a very small share of the population but are increasing their emissions very quickly and by very large levels of magnitude.” He added: “The growth in global emissions that we are experiencing at this point in time is coming from the top.”

The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, took data from the ADS-B Exchange platform, which records the signals sent once a minute by transponders on every plane, recording its position and altitude. This huge dataset – 1.8 terabytes – was then filtered for the 72 plane models marketed by their manufacturers as “business jets”. The emissions figures are most likely an underestimate, as smaller planes and emissions from taxiing on the ground were not included.

he analysis found the number of private jets increased by 28% and the distance flown jumped by 53% between 2019 and 2023. Fewer than a third of the flights were longer than 1000km and almost 900,000 flights were less than 50km.

“We know some people use them as taxis, really,” Gössling said. “If it’s just 50km, you could definitely do that by car.” Outside the US and Europe, Brazil, the Middle East and the Caribbean are private jet hotspots.

Much of the use is for leisure, the researchers found. For example, private jet use to Ibiza in Spain and Nice in France peaked in the summer and was concentrated around weekends. In the US, Taylor Swift, Drake, Floyd Mayweather JR, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey are among those who have been criticised for heavy private jet use.

The researchers also looked at some business events in 2023, with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland resulting in 660 private jet flights and the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai having 291 flights.

Gössling said the driving factors behind the large recent increase in private jet use have not been analysed, but might include an increasing reluctance to share cabins on commercial flights that began during the Covid pandemic. Industry documents describe private jet users as “ultra-high net worth”, comprising about 250,000 individuals, with an average wealth of $123m. US private jet users are increasingly using “privacy ICAO addresses”, which mask the identity of the plane and could make tracking them much harder in future.

According to Gössling passengers should pay for the climate damage resulting from each tonne of CO₂ emitted, estimated at about €200: “Very basically, it would seem fair that people paid for the damage they are causing by their behaviour.”

A second step would be to increase the landing fees for private aircraft which are currently very low, he added. A landing fee of €5,000 could be an effective deterrent, roughly doubling the cost of common private flights.

Alethea Warrington, head of aviation at the climate charity Possible, said: “Private jets, used by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy people, are an utterly unjustifiable and gratuitous waste of our scarce remaining emissions budget to avoid climate breakdown, and their emissions are soaring, even as the impacts of the climate crisis escalate.”

“It’s time for governments to act,” she said. “We need… a super-tax, rapidly arriving at an outright ban on private jets.”

The US Private Aviation Association did not respond to a request for comment.