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We’re all familiar with the hypocrisy of the socially conscious elites –\u00a0 remember the gathering at Davos when the airport was clogged with the private jets of the ultra-rich like Bill Gates and Al Gore who whine about carbon emissions and then\u00a0 fly in to chastise us..<\/p>\n
just four hours of flying on a private jet produces more emissions than the average person living in the EU emits each year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But they are trying to do the right thing by getting us to reduce our emissions, right?\u00a0 They are fighting the good fight on our behalf, right? Think we’ve all given up on expecting them to not live by double standards. Elon Musk tops the list of private-jet users, flying almost every other day. Taylor Swift seems to be one of the top users, too. Ah, but the good news: We’re helping PAY for this.<\/p>\n
The Federal Aviation Administration, airports, and other flight infrastructure are financed by what\u2019s called the Airport & Airway Trust Fund<\/a>. If you\u2019ve ever bought a plane ticket in the U.S., you\u2019ve helped fund this pot of cash, which stood at $14.80 billion at the end of 2021. Customers pay a fee equivalent to 7.5% of their fare with each ticket, as well as a small passenger facility charge to help with airport infrastructure. As the prices of airline tickets have risen in recent years, thanks to factors like oil prices and inflation, so, too, has that surcharge.<\/p>\n
One would think that private flights would be subject to similar fees to help fund the FAA. After all, one out of every six flights the FAA handles are private flights; they\u2019re a significant chunk of what the agency does all day. But, infuriatingly, those private flights are not subject to the same fees that your ticket is\u2014private planes just pay a surcharge on oil, which comes out to about 22 cents per gallon of fuel. Overall, according to the report, private flights end up funding just 2% of the FAA\u2019s trust fund.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are thousands of airports across the country, most partially or fully funded by taxpayers, many of them solely catering to private flights.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t just a story about the ills of capitalism\u2014it\u2019s also a climate story. The number of people electing to take private jets is ballooning. In Europe, the number of private flights increased threefold between 2020 and 2021, while associated emissions quadrupled; the amount of private flights in the U.S. has doubled since the pandemic. Private arrivals and departures have also begun to fill the gap at smaller airports where public service has been cut back or canceled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n