The Mile High Club

This column from The New Republic was written by Gregg Easterbrook.

An unreported scandal is the extent to which contemporary politicians increasingly zoom around in taxpayer-funded private planes, having an entire aircraft to themselves at an expense that is pure government waste, rather than simply flying aboard commercial airliners. For years it's been hard to get statistics on exactly how many politicians are riding their own special planes. But since September 11, any "general aviation" (non-commercial, non-military) aircraft wishing to land at Washington's Reagan National Airport has required a special waiver to do so. At a hearing last month, the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee reported that since September 11 restrictions were imposed, 244 waivers have been granted to politicians arriving at Washington in personal aircraft. And this is just politicians: It doesn't count the number of cabinet secretaries and Defense Department officials who zoom around in federal-government supplied individual jets that operate from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, rather than simply flying commercial.

Since September 11, Governor Mark Warner of Virginia has flown to Reagan National in a personal plane 46 times; Senator Sonny Perdue of Georgia, 26 times; Governor George Pataki of New York, 24 times; Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, 16 times; Senator John Kerry, 14 times.

Mainly what's involved here is stroking politicians' egos. When you fly in a private plane, you don't stand with the unwashed in regular airline terminals--instead your limo drives directly onto the field of the general-aviation area of the airport, which most travelers never see, and you step directly into the plane. This is a major injection of self-flattery, but shouldn't political leaders have to stand with the unwashed in airports, rather than be treated like little pashas? It's a big ego trip, too, to know that an entire airplane awaits your beck and call — when your incredibly important behind meets the seat, you signal the pilot to depart. Then the entire plane takes flight just to move you, which depending on the plane may waste resources and fuel like mad, but makes you feel important. These factors also have a lot to do with the celebrity boom in private aircraft; more on that in a moment.

Executives, celebrities, and politicians who fly private planes at someone else's expense often claim they must do so to save precious time, which is itself an ego-booster — "my time is so incredibly valuable." But with all apologies to the great state of Kentucky, it is unlikely that Ernie Fletcher's time is so incredibly valuable to be worth thousands of dollars in tax funds just to save a few minutes of it. And anyway, Fletcher did not save any time. On June 9, his King Air left Cincinnati at about 2:30 p.m., arriving at Reagan National at 4:36 p.m.; many Kentucky travelers use the Cincinnati airport. Delta flight 940 left Cincinnati at 3 p.m. that day and arrived at Reagan National at 4:37 p.m. If Fletcher needed to get to Washington by 4:30, he could have left a half-hour later on the commercial flight, and still arrived at the same time his private flight arrived. (Delta's large jet on that route flies faster than a King Air.) According to MapQuest, it should take Governor Mark Warner 1 hour and 48 minutes to drive the 105 miles from the Virginia statehouse to Reagan National. How much could a personal plane really shave off that time? Of course, maybe Warner doesn't want to get stuck in the I-95 round-the-clock traffic nightmare that sits between Richmond and Washington. But he should get stuck in it, to appreciate what his state's average citizens deal with every day. Instead he flies above their heads, at their expense.

Now cost. According to this chart , the direct cost of operating Gov. Fletcher's King Air is $597 an hour, and the plane flew for four hours on the roundtrip. But that estimate included only one pilot; King flew with two state-paid pilots and a state police officer as his bodyguard. Next, "direct cost" is only operational expense, skipping the price of the plane itself. So Fletcher's private flight to Washington, staged for reasons of ego ("My friends, I must leave now for the private plane that will take me to the president's funeral...") would have cost between $5,000 and $10,000. First-class roundtrip airfare on Delta flight 940 is $1,088. Governor Fletcher's totally unnecessary private flight not only created a needless national security alert, it wasted thousands of dollars of tax money.

And what about that bodyguard? Fletcher was, after all, headed for the Reagan funeral, one of the most heavily guarded, security-conscious events ever staged. At the Reagan funeral, law enforcement and military units were everywhere. The state police officer who accompanied Fletcher was not needed to protect him, but rather was there to make the governor feel important — to carry his bags and say, "Make way, make way, VIP coming through."

I don't mean to pick on Fletcher — Jeb Bush, John Kerry, and every other politician flying personal planes into Washington is doing so mainly for ego-gratification reasons. And then there's the boom in CEOs zooming around in company-paid planes, in order to be driven straight into the private terminal and made to feel important. See my previous article on the Boeing Business Jet, an entire 737 airliner converted for the private use of a single CEO, at the expense of his shareholders and workers.

In the new Atlantic Monthly, Eric Alterman notes that Laurie David, wife of Larry David — among Hollywood's wealth elite owing to "Seinfeld" royalties — has become an influential environmental crusader, but herself travels in chartered Gulfstream jets. Laurie David has organized numerous celebrity save-the-environment events and "reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable," a private jet, Alterman writes. I did a few quick calculations. The mid-sized Gulfstream G200 model can carry about 2,100 gallons of jet fuel, which is made from petroleum, and would burn around 1,200 to 1,500 gallons flying from New York to Los Angeles, depending on wind speed and how many passengers were aboard. A Hummer driven 15,000 miles, the average put on a car per year, would burn around 1,250 gallons of gasoline. So for Laurie David to take one cross-country flight in a Gulfstream is the same, in terms of Persian-Gulf dependence and greenhouse-gas emissions, as if she drove a Hummer for an entire year. But then, conservation is what other people should do.

Now consider ever-rising sales of ego planes. According to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, in 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available, 676 private jets of the Gulfstream class were sold. If each of those 676 new private jets flies a coast-to-coast roundtrip once per week, the petroleum burned would be equivalent to putting 70,000 Hummers on the road. General Motors expects to sell about 25,000 Hummers this year.

So politicians in publicly paid private planes are merrily wasting taxpayers' money, and creating security problems for Washington, in order to make themselves feel important, while celebrities and CEOs in private jets are slurping oil at a frantic rate. Think of it — the new private jets being sold every year equate to three times the petroleum waste and greenhouse-gas emissions of the new Hummers being sold each year. But since the private jets are leaving from the private aviation terminals where we don't see them, nobody seems to know or care, while everybody's upset about Hummers, which we can see. The super-rich like Laurie David may be beyond shame, but couldn't politicians, at least, be shamed about their desires to have an aircraft all to themselves rather than simply fly commercial?

Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor at TNR.
By Gregg Easterbrook
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