Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – Private aircraft emit at least 10 times more pollutants per passenger than commercial aircraft, which contributes disproportionately to the climate impact of the aviation sector, according to a report published in May 2023.
Moreover, with nearly one in six flights operated by the FAA being private, the sector contributes only 2% of the taxes that primarily fund the agency.
Amidst these concerns, the owner of a private jet decided to reduce the amount of these emissions. Stephen Prince, vice president of the National Millionaires group of wealthy Americans pushing for higher taxes also included in the report, will give up his Cessna 650 Citation III.
Prince owns a medium-sized and long-range corporate jet, which can accommodate about nine passengers, after he learned the carbon intensity of private aviation compared to commercial aviation.
“I was amazed at the fact that through the love of private air travel, I was willing to ignore what I was doing to the environment and future generations,” he told CNN. “I have to change. I just can’t keep doing it.”
The long commercial road back
Stephen Prince is giving up his Cessna 650 Citation III for the environment.Credit: Courtesy Patriotic Millionaires
Prince owned about half a dozen private jets before the Citation III, his largest and most expensive to operate, with operating costs alone ranging from $275,000 to $300,000 a year. He explained that private flying is so good, it becomes addictive.
“It’s the best way to travel ever. But I’m giving it up. I’m just going back to commercial air travel, as much as I hate the mechanics of it after I’ve privately traveled for the past six or seven years. TSA, long lines, canceled flights, baggage,” he said. “Lost, I hate everything that goes with this kind of flying. And when you fly first class, it’s not cheap either. But I made up my mind again in March of this year. I’m holding on to it, I’m going to sell it, I’m going to get rid of it quickly.”
Cessna is currently worth about a million dollars and in the current market should find a buyer pretty quickly.
There is only one problem. Prince, an entrepreneur in the gift card and payments industry, may give up his plane, but he won’t give up private air travel entirely.
Credit: Joan Valls/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
“I have a friend who will let me rent his smaller plane,” he says. “It’s a twin-turbo, burns about a quarter as much Cessna fuel, and I’ll use it two or three times a year to go to a pheasant hunting reserve in the northwest corner of Nebraska.”
He added that he would continue to convince other millionaires to give up their planes.
However, Prince believes that the wealthy in the United States should pay more taxes. “I think all of us in American society don’t pay what we have to,” he said.
He explained, “No one wants to pay taxes and they have come up with all these explanations and reasons, but the real reason is that they are greedy. Me too! We all are. But we all need to become members of the ‘us’ society, not the ‘me’ society. If we don’t care In the common good of all mankind, we live with a bad set of principles.
Pay the real cost
Credit: George Rose/Getty Images
He’s not the only one who thinks so. In keeping with Prince’s ideas, the Institute for Policy Studies report called for higher taxes on both private jet and fuel sales.
The authors recommend a sales tax of 10% on used aircraft and 5% on new ones. They are also calling for a doubling of the federal jet fuel tax from $0.219 per gallon to $0.438 per gallon for more frequent private jet users.
For example, the report indicated that Elon Musk, one of the most active users of private jets in the United States, would pay an additional $3.94 million in taxes under these proposed terms.
The report’s authors calculate that he bought a new plane, took 171 flights (about one every two days), consumed more than 220,000 gallons of jet fuel, and caused 2,100 tons of carbon emissions in 2022, 132 times the average American.
“Private jets are a reflection of growing inequality and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very few,” Chuck Collins, one of the report’s authors, told CNN.
From an environmental perspective, we need to decarbonise the aviation sector. This seems like a very good starting point. It’s one of the greatest carbon emitters, but it’s really very few people. We have to have very high taxes, usage taxes, and fuel taxes that discourage private jet owners.”
Collins adds that the construction of private aviation infrastructure should come to a complete halt, as this form of transport must be phased out.
The size of the global private jet fleet has increased by 133% in the past two decades, from 9,895 aircraft in 2000 to 23,133 aircraft mid-2022, according to the report.
Meanwhile, in Europe, a group of countries, including France and Ireland, have called on European policymakers to tighten regulations around private jets in order to limit their use. In April, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport announced that it was considering banning private jets entirely from its territory.
“I think that’s the right way to go,” Collins commented.
“It may be difficult to completely ban private air travel, but we certainly have to make it pay its real environmental and social costs,” he concluded.
2023-07-15 11:25:58
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