Growing hostility towards private jets recently prompted one of the world’s richest men to sell his Bombardier plane. The big boss of the Quebec multinational, however, assures that he is not worried.
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In June 2020, the young American Jack Sweeney, then 18 years old, opened a Twitter account which broadcasts in real time the flights of the private jet of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
Interest in the @ElonJet account grew quickly, so much so that in the fall of 2021 Mr. Musk offered Mr. Sweeney US$5,000 to get him to shut it down, but to no avail.
Displeased Musk
“I’m not mad at the idea of being shot by a psycho,” wrote the richest man in the world in a private message sent to Jack Sweeney.
On Sunday, Elon Musk assured that he was not going to use his new status as owner of Twitter to delete
@ElonJet.
“My commitment to free speech goes so far as to prevent me from banning the account that follows my plane, even if it is a direct risk to my personal safety,” he said. he tweeted.
In recent months, Mr. Sweeney has created several other automated Twitter accounts to track the private jets of celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.
“I like to share information with people, whether it’s for climatic reasons or simply to allow them to follow the personalities in which they are interested,” he told the Log.
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Emulators in France
File photo, Getty Images
In France, Internet users have been inspired by Jack Sweeney to create accounts that follow the private jets of billionaires in the country, including that of Bernard Arnault. At the head of the luxury group LVMH, the latter is the second richest person in the world behind … Elon Musk.
Mr. Arnault did not appreciate this attention at all, so much so that he recently parted with his aircraft, a Bombardier Global 7500.
“With all these stories, the group had a plane, we sold it. The result, now, is that no one can know where I’m going since I rent planes,” the entrepreneur launched last month on the airwaves of the French station Radio Classique.
“I did not expect that,” reacted Mr. Sweeney, still surprised at the turmoil aroused by his idea.
Éric Martel, CEO of Bombardier, assured that Bernard Arnault’s stunt is isolated for the moment.
“It’s a personal choice,” he said last week. I don’t see that much right now. »
Mr. Martel recalled that the craze for private jets, which has increased with the pandemic, remains strong. “There are always all sorts of things that can happen, but business jet trends are heavy,” he said.
Extremely polluting appliances
At Greenpeace, we argue that the scale of the current climate crisis should lead to an outright ban on private jet flights.
“Business aviation generates more than 33 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, which is as much as a country like Denmark produces,” noted environmentalist Patrick Bonin. “It’s 5 to 10 times more polluting [par passager] than commercial aircraft,” he added.
Greenpeace is counting on governments to support the employees of Bombardier and other companies in the sector who would be hard hit by a possible abolition of private jets.
“It’s not up to the workers to bear the cost of this transition that we have to operate at high speed,” maintained Mr. Bonin. No one should be left behind. »
The ten stars whose jets pollute the most
British marketing agency Yard has listed the 10 most used private jets in the first half of 2022 among those followed by the @CelebrityJets Twitter account, created by young American Jack Sweeney. Here they are:
Note: The stars that operate these planes are not always on board the flights listed by the @CelebrityJets account. GHG emissions were estimated using a single device model. In addition, some data relating to Mr. Mayweather’s and Mr. Scott’s jets was not available.