Rich People Using Private Jets as 'Taxis' Are Emitting More Pollution in One Hour Than Average Person Does All Year, Climate Scientists Warn

The world's wealthiest people are using private jets like taxis to fly away to weekend getaways, sporting events and even climate conferences, researchers who track the flights say.

The researchers said an analysis of the flights to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions show they rose 46% between 2019 and 2013.

Traveling for an hour in a private jet releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the average person produces in a year.

"Private aviation is making a growing contribution to climate change," the researchers said, noting that about half the trips cover less than 310 miles and slightly less than 5% only travel about 31 miles.

"Flight pattern analysis confirms extensive travel for leisure purposes, and for cultural and political events," the researchers wrote in the study published Thursday in Nature.

The "ultra-high net worth" individuals - numbering about 256,000 people with a combined wealth of $31 trillion - used the private aircraft to jet away to the Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup, the Cannes Film Festival in France, getaways in Spain and the Caribbean, as well as the World Economic Forum in Switzerland and the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

"There are a lot of people using these aircraft as taxis, where you cover whatever distance by aircraft simply because it's more convenient," Professor Stefan Gossling, from Sweden's Linnaeus University, who led the research, told the BBC.

"If somebody's flight emits in one hour as much as an average human being emits in a year - just to watch a soccer game - then perhaps it shows those people think they are outside the standards that we have as a global community," Gossling said.

The study found that private jets in 2023 produced about 15.6 million tons of carbon dioxide - or about as much as 3.7 million gas-powered vehicles used over the course of a year, the BBC said.

There were nearly 26,000 private aircraft in service at the end of December 2023, and 4.3 million individual flights were made that year the study said.

The United States, which is home to about 4% of the global population, has 68.7% of all registered private aircraft.

Brazil follows in second place, followed by Canada, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Gossling said the emissions "might not seem much, but this is a tiny fraction of humanity and each of these individuals in a year is emitting more than a small city in central Africa."