As Celebrity Backlash Grows, So Does Overall Private Jet Use

With his tweets, Mr. Sweeney, a sophomore at the University of Central Florida who also runs the

Elon Musk

jet-tracking account @ElonJet, has propelled a global conversation about the role celebrities play in the warming of the planet. After @CelebJets shared that Ms. Jenner’s plane had completed a 17-minute flight in July, she was branded a “climate criminal” by online commenters. And for several weeks now, Ms. Swift’s jet has been the subject of memes about needlessly flying private: to Starbucks, Target, the fridge. 

A spokesperson for Ms. Swift said, in an email, “Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals. To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect.” Ms. Jenner declined to comment through a representative. 

Mr. Sweeney said he hopes that his @CelebJets account, which has 112,000 followers and relies on public data gleaned from a network of ground-based receivers, will push private fliers “to be more efficient.” So far, they have primarily stoked outrage among climate-conscious millennials and Gen Zers.

After Ms. Jenner shared a photo to Instagram of her and rapper

Travis Scott’s

private jets (caption: “you wanna take mine or yours ?”), fans condemned the post as a display of excessive wealth and environmental indifference. “Eat the rich” and “tax the rich” were common refrains. “Girl what am i recycling for,” another commenter wrote. 

As more visible fliers, celebrities have been subject to the bulk of scrutiny when it comes to the environmental impact of jet emissions. But they are hardly the only people who have made a habit of private air travel. Since the pandemic began, the private aviation industry has seen record growth, executives and analysts say, despite surging fuel prices and mounting environmental concerns. Monthly flights of private jets have jumped nearly 30% since 2019, according to the flight-tracking firm Flightradar24, and charter services are reporting sharp increases in demand.

“I’ve been in the private jet market for the last 10 years, and on the aviation commercial side for 22, and I’ve never seen the private-jet business like this,” said

Darren Banham,

chief executive of Discovery Jets, a charter and jet management company. 

The industry has seen a new crop of customers, particularly for shared planes and on-demand charter services. At the brokerage firm JB Jets, founded and run by

Ben Parker

and

Jamie Gelman,

75% of clients are first-time private fliers, Mr. Parker said. Industry executives attribute rising interest in private flights to a mix of Covid safety anxieties, the elimination of short domestic routes by commercial airlines and the current nightmare that is going to the airport. 

Taylor Swift’s Falcon 7X and Kylie Jenner’s Bombardier BD-700. Christopher Peterson/SplashNews.com; Gordon Zammit/Alamy Stock Photo

Now, for every celebrity or influencer posting about flying private, industry executives say there are many more discreet passengers: authors flying for speaking engagements, real-estate agents viewing new properties, the newly crypto-rich vacationing in Puerto Rico, families on beach getaways. They rent jets on an hourly basis, at rates that run from about $3,000 to $10,000 an hour, depending on a plane’s size and route. (Heavy Jets, like Ms. Swift’s Falcon 7X, typically rent for $8,000 to $10,000 an hour, Mr. Parker said.)

“You can show up 15 minutes before, five minutes before,” Mr. Parker said. “You can show up late, and the plane will wait for you.”

Amenities, including complimentary ground transportation, luxury slippers, high-end toothpaste and other, more personal touches, also entice new customers. XO, a jet company that offers one of many

Uber

-like services for the skies, has decorated planes with team décor for clients traveling to college football games, supplied Legos for families flying with children and procured flowers for passengers on their way to funerals, said

Danny Manzouri,

the company’s vice president of sales. Flights also offer custom dining services. 

“People believe our clients want caviar and Champagne, but believe it or not, they usually want McDonald’s or Burger King,” Mr. Parker said. “But we usually hear about it if the water is Essentia and not Fiji.”

Chartered jets also cater to pets. NetJets, which sells fractional ownership of private planes starting at $240,000 annually, says it accommodates pet pigs, while XO has flown passengers with cats, birds and lizards. Mr. Manzouri said the company declined one client’s request to fly with pet mini goats. 

But all of these bespoke requests come at a high price—and a steep environmental cost. Using data from Mr. Sweeney’s @CelebJets account, Yard, a sustainability marketing firm, published a list of the celebrity jets that had generated the greatest carbon emissions so far this year. All of them weighed in at more than 3,000 metric tons to date; according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, most cars emit fewer than 5 metric tons of carbon in a year.

Jet-chartering companies say they have made efforts to offset those emissions. XO gives fliers the option to send funds to “climate action projects around the world.” Jet Aviation uses some sustainable fuel and has been trying to eliminate single-use plastics from its aircraft, said

David Paddock,

brand president. 

Such measures—whether taken by companies or individual celebrities—prompt jokes on social media from people who see them as small compared with the environmental impact of a jet. 

In one TikTok video, a creator named

Zev Burton

parodies a Swiftie standing up for Ms. Swift’s environmental considerations. He points out that her album art features images of the woods and that she retains a publicist named Tree. 

“She rerecorded and rereleased all of her albums,” Mr. Burton says. “That’s recycling.”

Write to Chavie Lieber at Chavie.Lieber@WSJ.com