The wealth explosion among the ultra-rich has led to soaring demand for luxury private jets and the infrastructure to serve them, including expanded private aircraft hangers and runway capacity at local and regional airports. Meanwhile, transnational corporations wanting to shield their top managers from interactions with the public are also expanding their private jet fleets, even as more shareholders are trying to rein in private jet excess.
A vital new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, High Flyers 2026, reveals just how much this private jet-setting is costing taxpayers and the planet.
Key findings:
- Private jets and charter services account for roughly 16 percent of FAA-handled flight operations. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates noncommercial private jets account for 7 percent of the airspace activity yet contribute less than 0.6 percent of taxes that flow into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund that helps finance FAA operations.
- An estimated 256,000 people, or roughly 0.003 percent of the population, fly on private jets, including the ultrawealthy who use fractional ownership or private charter jets.
- Private jets are one of the most super-polluting forms of transportation, with direct carbon emissions 10 to 14 times greater per passenger than commercial aviation travel –along with additional contributions to global warming from effective radiative forcing, which can be two to four times greater than those from CO2 emissions.
- The National Business Aviation Association spent approximately $2 million on lobbying in 2025 in favor of legislation that gives massive tax breaks for private jet owners, like the permanent accelerated depreciation tax of 2025.
- Private jet ownership and use has accelerated as the number of ultra-high net worth individuals and billionaires has grown. There are 3,428 global billionaires as of this year. The median wealth of a private jet owner is $190 million, while the median wealth of a fractional owner of a private jet is $140 million.
- A luxury tax of 10 percent on used jets and 5 percent on new jets could have raised more than $3 billion in 2025, funds that could be invested in sustainable ground transportation.
- More than a third of all Airport Infrastructure Grants awarded through 2026 went to airport projects that may primarily benefit private jets, amounting to more than $1.13 billion in grant funds.
- Between 2019 and 2025, fractional jet ownership increased 65 percent.
- Substituting so-called “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) is a greenscreen distraction. While there may be some potential for electrification of small scale short hop aviation, there is no scalable or cost-effective alternative to kerosene-based jet fuels developing at the speed of climate change.
“The rest of us should not have to pay for the luxury excess of the private jet billionaire class. Our hard-earned tax dollars shouldn’t subsidize their reckless air travel habits that further harm our warming planet,” said report co-author Chuck Collins. “At a time when most ordinary people are struggling to afford groceries, rent, and healthcare, our report exposes how the ultra-rich and greedy corporations are private jet-setting at the expense of the rest of us, while trying to dodge accountability for fueling the climate crisis.”
The Institute for Policy Studies worked with the worldwide community of 20,000+ open-source trackers to build a new tool (the Private Jet Emissions Tracker, or PJET) that analyzes the private-jet flights into and out of specific locations and times—like the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, or every game of the World Cup.
One key solution: make private jet-setters pay their fair share.
For starters, Congress should strip a private jet tax avoidance provision from the pending air traffic safety legislation, the ALERT Act. “The private jet lobby is cynically and shamelessly inserting yet another tax break for private jets into legislation to respond to the Potomac river aircraft-heliocopter crash in January 2025,” said Collins.
Champions like Stephen Prince have publicly announced they have given up private jets. Meanwhile, high-profile jet-setters like Taylor Swift who have drawn scrutiny recently have yet to change their travel habits.
“Since we first released our analysis on the costs of private jet travel to taxpayers and the planet in 2023, we’ve seen a shocking and irresponsible rise in the use of private jet travel,” said report co-author Omar Ocampo. “Unfortunately, the private jet lobby has worked hard to lower the tax obligations of the ultrawealthy. Meanwhile, the aviation industry pushes false solutions on the climate crisis. It’s time to stop making taxpayers subsidize luxury private jet travel and use our resources to green other industries.”
Other key policy solutions:
- Stop another pending private jet tax break.
- Repeal one-year accelerated bonus depreciation of private jet purchases and pass the End Subsidies for Private Jets Act.
- Increase tax on private jet fuel.
- Levy a luxury tax on private jet sales.
- Roll back secrecy provisions.
- Stop funding and constructing new private jet infrastructure, just as some institutions have committed to no new fossil fuel infrastructure.
“At a time when billionaires and the ultra-wealthy get to avoid the enshittification of commercial air travel experience, taxpayers and the planet shouldn’t bear the costs of their luxury private jet-setting,” concluded Collins.
Read the full report: https://ips-dc.org/report-high-flyers-2026
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.