Owning a private jet is now becoming a serious PR misstep

As an expat living in the US and a journalist who reports on issues from the ground, I fly more often than most. I’m by no means a weekly jetsetter, but in the past two months I’ve travelled to the Caribbean island of Curacao, Santa Fe in New Mexico, Austin in Texas and Washington DC from my home in New York – and in a few weeks, I’ll also be travelling to the UK for my annual visit to the homeland. I can tell my Boeing from my Airbus and I have preferences on certain types of planes (the A380 is one of my absolute favourites, and you’d never catch me on a Boeing 737 Max.) I’ve mastered the art of travelling only with carry-on luggage to save time and money. I’m a member of multiple flying clubs. And one of my geekiest hobbies is researching the business and first-class offerings of airlines, just in case one day I become rich enough to actually pay for them. Aviation bloggers like The Points Guy and One Mile at a Time are my weird cup of tea.

Nevertheless, I can’t imagine ever wanting to own a private jet. In the parallel universe where I’m a billionaire, I still think I’d be happy to kick back in an Etihad Residence suite en route to the Middle East or sample caviar on Japan’s flagship airline JAL (I know, it’s very gracious of me). Owning your own plane sounds like owning your own horse: you have to find somewhere big enough for it, pay for experts to look it over, and catch the social flak of being a person who thinks it’s all necessary. These days, now everyone’s a little bit more aware of the climate crisis as the world burns in consecutive heatwaves, it seems especially egregious to travel as a singular person (entourage or no) in a full-sized aeroplane.

There’s been a lot of discussion of this lately because Kylie Jenner – of the Kardashian clan – set the world alight with an especially tone-deaf Instagram post. The post was a picture of two private jets parked together – one belonging to her, and the other to her boyfriend Travis Scott – with the caption: “You wanna take mine or yours?” Relatable this was not. Somewhat predictably, Jenner was dragged on social media. Some aviation sleuths even started looking into the flight paths that her private jet had recently taken, and pointed out one 17-minute flight from Van Nuys in Los Angeles to the nearby Californian town of Camarillo.

Headlines proliferated about the emissions that must have been pumped into the air from that flight, and many speculated that Kylie was using her plane to avoid automobile traffic. (A post on the One Mile at a Time flight blog pointed out that it’s far more likely Kylie wasn’t on the plane when it flew that route, but instead that the plane was being repositioned nearer to her home base for its next long flight. That seems much more likely and, morally bankrupt or not, is common practice not just for private jets but for everyday airlines.)

Just as it seemed like the Kylie controversy had died down, a company called Yard published a follow-up study this week that looked into the worst celebrity offenders when it comes to private jet usage. While Jenner was on the list, she was hardly the worst, coming out at 19th. The number one worst offender was Taylor Swift, whose publicists immediately responded by attributing her climate crime to generosity. Taylor regularly loans out her jet to friends, they said, and that’s why her plane is seen more often in the sky.

Whether or not Swift is simply much more willing to share her toys than Jenner, Kim Kardashian (who came in seventh), Floyd Mayweather (second), Oprah Winfrey (ninth) or Steven Spielberg (sixth) is not really the point. Her plane is still in the air, creating emissions, helping to destroy the planet. And as the Jenner jet sleuthing proves, if you fly a plane to an airport that isn’t useful to the next person using it, it needs to be repositioned. That repositioning costs fuel and costs the planet. It still counts, even if Taylor and her famous cats (who have featured on her social media flying alongside her) are not personally onboard. Perhaps she should encourage her friends to sample the offerings of mainstream airlines, or even pay for their tickets, if she wants to help them out.

The Jenners and Kardashians have made enviable lifestyle habits their brand. Private jets, diamond earrings and children’s birthday parties so eye-waveringly expensive that they would wipe out most people’s bank accounts for decades are par for the course if you follow their social media or their TV appearances. But what used to be a fun game is now becoming a serious PR misstep. And certainly, for Taylor Swift, who seeks to trade off girl-next-door relatability, this is not good news – whether or not she’s a good friend to other celebs. If any of them want to mitigate damage to their brand now, they might do well to put up a few well-timed posts about the first-class offerings of Delta or American Airlines. Even better, make like a normal salaried worker and take the next flight in coach.