Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, has co-authored a report detailing the effects of private jet travel on the Earth and average citizens.
The Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires released the report, "High Flyers 2023: How Ultra-Rich Private Jet Travel Costs the Rest of Us and Burns Up Our Planet," on May 1. In the report, Collins and co-authors Omar Ocampo and Kalena Thomhave "this expensive, carbon-intensive form of travel is bad for both the earth and the taxpayers who subsidize it for the ultra-rich."
"Private jet travel by billionaires and the ultra-wealthy imposes a tremendous cost on the rest of us," Collins said in a news release outlining the top 10 facts in the report.
The study reports that private jets emit approximately 10 times more pollutants per passenger than do commercial planes, meaning approximately one percent of the population is considered to be responsible for half of all aviation carbon emissions; and that private jet travel has increased by 20%, and emissions from private jets by 23%, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other findings include private jets account for approximately one out of every six flights handled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) but contribute only two percent of the taxes that fund FAA. The majority - more than 70% - of the tax revenue that funds the FAA comes from the 7.5% tax on tickets that airline passengers pay, according to the report. In contrast, private jet fliers only pay fuel surcharge taxes, which count for approximately 22 cents per gallon of jet fuel.
The median net worth of the full owner of a private jet is $190 million; the net work of a part-owner of a private jet is $140 million respectively, representing 0.0008% of the global population, the report found. This subset of people is overwhelmingly male, 50 or older and works in the banking, finance, and real estate industries.
Private jet sales set records in transaction and dollar volume in 2021 and 2022, according to the report, which states that a 10% and 5% transfer fee on pre-owned and new private aircraft would have raised $2.4 billion in 2021 and $2.6 billion in 2022. The private jet market's value grew from $32.3 billion in 2021 to $34.1 billion in 2022, with the market projected to expand even further, the report states.
Many municipal airports in the U.S., which are often funded by the public, primarily serve private and corporate jets and offer airport runways subsidized by taxes, the report found. The National Business Aviation Association, which is the largest entity in the private jet lobby, has spent approximately $2.4 million each year since 2008 lobbying the federal government, primarily for tax breaks.
The report recommends several measures that could help regulate the private jet industry, including implementation of a transfer tax on all private jets; levy a private jet fuel tax; instituting a “short hop” surcharge on flights of 250 miles or less; resist efforts to increase passenger facility charges until private jet owners pay their fair share; create a sustainable transportation equity trust fund; increase TSA security oversight of private jets; and pass the Aircraft Ownership Transparency Act.
“Not only do ordinary travelers and taxpayers subsidize the air space for private jets," Collins said in the report, "but the high flyers also contribute considerably more pollution than other passengers. If we can’t ban private jets, we should at least tax them and require them to pay to offset their environmental damage and subsidies.”
