Why are private jets so irresistible to the country’s bigwigs?
City bigwigs and politicians seem set on using private jets to get around. Should we be up in arms or is it vital for efficiency, asks Guy Taylor
Private jet use by the UK’s top businessman and political figures has, if you’ll pardon the pun, flown into the spotlight in recent months.
Business leaders and politicians have courted headlines alike.
My colleague Elliot Gulliver-Needham and I have spent many hours combing through Flightradar24 data, covering every private jet flight from London since 2019. There have been over 200,000 to and from the UK capital.
What is it about private flying that makes it irresistible for the City’s bigwigs?
There is significant evidence it does boost efficiency. Check in is non-existent, flight times are far quicker, you can book at very short notice and it’s much easier to get work done in the air.
Others argue; if they’ve earned the money, they’ve earned the luxury, right? Debatable.
The world is facing a global climate catastrophe and big companies are doing the utmost to trumpet their ESG credentials. It is alarming how difficult it is to find any public data on how much businesses are actually shelling out on emission-pumping private jet flights.
At the same time, rows in the City are brewing over FTSE chief executives’ hefty pay packets: see recent spats over LSEG boss David Schwimmer’s tasty £13m, or Astrazeneca chief Pascal Soriot’s £18.7m.
Regardless, we now have Zoom, Teams, mobile phones for business meetings. If you are so desperate to fly, why not just book in advance (first class, if you really must) and take an extra couple of hours’ hit?
Some of the flights are also extremely short distances, often domestic, and could be done via train.
Perhaps most concerningly, it’s completely questionable whether many of the company trips are actually for business purposes at all.
At a time when Asda was under fire for hiking prices, the Issa brothers’ private jets, bought using loans from their petrol forecourt business EG Group, flew to destinations including Ibiza, Malaga, Tenerife, Corfu and Cancun.
I tried to google whether there was an Asda in Ibiza. All I found was a Metro article on someone’s dad spending £25 pounds to fly there for a 24-hour bender, with nothing but a change of clothes (in an Asda bag). At least there are cheaper options for the rest of us.
The facts are pretty damning. According to the campaign group Transport and Environment, each private aircraft is up to 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains.
Moreover, around 40 per cent of private flights are empty as the jets must be flown to the correct pick-up locations.
The more cynical may argue major firms just don’t care. Too much money, not enough accountability and a desire from City chiefs and political leaders to feel like the top dog. But there is a little bit more nuance here.
City A.M. interviewed a number of private jet firms recently and they do cite accurate facts showing private jet use accounts for a mere fraction of total aviation emissions and that travel does help top-level C-suites get more done.
But that argument misses the point that this is about personal responsibility. Private jet users may cite percentage points about emissions, but what really irks people are the ratios at play here.
No one cares if they account for only 0.1 per cent of total emissions if it’s only a tiny handful of people doing it, with almost no effort on behalf of the companies to be transparent.
The idea of Rishi Sunak flying on a taxpayer-funded private jet to Leeds while the country battles a cost of living crisis probably doesn’t help either.
He’d be better off taking HS2 in future…ah.