Growing hostility towards private jets recently prompted one of the world’s richest men to sell his Bombardier aircraft. However, the big boss of the Quebec multinational 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 that broadcasts in real time the flights of the private jet of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
With kind approval
Jack Sweeney
Interest in the @ElonJet account grew rapidly, so much so that in the fall of 2021, Mr. Musk offered Mr. Sweeney $5,000 to get him to close it, but to no avail.
Dissatisfied Musk
“I’m not mad at the idea of being shot by a psychopath,” the richest man in the world wrote in a private message to Jack Sweeney.
On Sunday, Elon Musk assured that he would not use his new status as owner of Twitter to delete
@ElonJet.
“My commitment to freedom of expression goes so far as to prevent me from suspending the account that’s following my plane, even if it poses a direct risk to my personal safety,” he said on Twitter.
In recent months, Mr. Sweeney has created several other automated Twitter accounts to track the private jets of celebrities including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.
“I like to share information with people, whether it’s for climate reasons or simply to allow them to follow the personalities they are interested in,” he told the Journal.
Emulators in France
File Photo, Getty Images
In France, Jack Sweeney inspired netizens 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 an airplane, we sold it. The result is now that since I rent planes, no one can know where I’m flying to,” the entrepreneur launched on the airwaves of French station Radio Classique last month.
“I didn’t expect that,” Mr. Sweeney replied, still surprised at the uproar his idea caused.
Bombardier CEO Éric Martel assured that Bernard Arnault’s stunt is isolated for the time being.
“It’s a personal decision,” he said last week. I’m not seeing that much right now. »
Mr. Martel reminded that the enthusiasm for private jets, which has increased with the pandemic, remains strong. “Anything can always happen, but business jet trends are tough,” he said.
Extremely polluting devices
At Greenpeace, we argue that the scale of the current climate crisis should lead to a total ban on private jet flights.
“Business aviation produces more than 33 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, that’s as much as a country the size of Denmark,” noted environmentalist Patrick Bonin. “It’s 5 to 10 times more polluting [par passager] than airliners,” he added.
Greenpeace is counting on government support for workers at Bombardier and other industry companies who would be hit hard by a possible phasing out of private jets.
“It’s not up to workers to bear the cost of this transition, which we need to make at speed,” Mr Bonin said. Nobody 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, including the @CelebrityJets Twitter account created by young American Jack Sweeney. Here you are:
Note: The stars operating these aircraft are not always on board the flights listed in the @CelebrityJets account. Greenhouse gas emissions were estimated using a single device model. In addition, some data on Mr. Mayweather’s and Mr. Scott’s jets was unavailable.
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