With close to 25 000 private jets in circulation across the world, these ultra-luxurious aircrafts have become the ultimate symbol of success. But they’ve also become a target for environmentalists, who track the planes of stars and billionaires around the world. We investigate the lucrative and controversial business of private jets – a secret world which prefers to remain hidden from view…
Ziporah shows us around one of the private jets she has available for sale. With its 900 square feet of living space and two bedrooms, it’s more like a luxury apartment than a plane. The price? $25 million with a further $5 million a year in maintenance and an additional $40,000 per fuel refill. Kolin has set up a company renting out the private jets of millionaires when they are not in use. He makes booking a plane as easily as booking a taxi – but with champagne and caviar as an added bonus. And now, you don’t even need to be a millionaire to fly private. Last-minute deals on ‘empty leg’ flights, (where a private jet flies from deposing passengers in one city to collecting others in a second) often have flights discounted to 15% of the normal price.
But with the effects of climate change becoming more and more evident, no celebrity wants to be seen in a private jet for fear of being targeted by environmental campaigners. To many people, their jets are nothing but a symbol of unjustified, unacceptable pollution in an age of global warming. Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and even Bernaud Arnault, the Head of LVMH, have all had their planes tracked and denounced as “ecological atrocities”.