Photo: Gulfstream/Instagram Jeff Bezos (Composite)
You can't expect a billionaire businessman like Jeff Bezos to mingle with the commoners onboard commercial flights because he has neither the time nor the inclination for that. Moreover, he has the money to afford the best in terms of personal transportation, three times over.
Obviously, what a millionaire or billionaire does with their money is no one's business but their own, but in the larger context of intense scrutiny of private jet use, this comes across as a bit excessive. According to public records seen recently by one media outlet, Jeff Bezos owns not one, nor two, but three different private jets. He also owns a hangar in Seattle where he keeps them stored.
Over the past couple of years, high-profile names, whether celebrities or business people like Bezos and Elon Musk, have come under fire online over their excessive use of private jets. These people, flight tracking has revealed, would rather fly by jet over distances they could easily and quite comfortably cover by car, spewing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere while lecturing us on how we should try and fly less for the sake of our planet.
The discussion on the huge carbon footprint of private jets has also spilled into how, more often than not, the same jets are written off as business expenses, becoming tax write-offs within a year of purchase. In other words, not only are regular people suffering for the indulgences of the rich because they're destroying our planet, but they're also quite effectively paying for the same indulgences out of their own pockets.
Photo: Gulfstream
With that in mind, the news that Bezos owns three different jets isn't bound to land well. The report notes that he bought his first private aircraft in 2004, a Dassault Falcon 900EX he owned until 2015. That same year, Bezos bought a hangar on Boeing Field in Seattle and, soon after, his first larger, longer-range jet: a second-hand 2015 G650ER with a 22-seat capacity and powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce BR 700 engines.
In 2019, Bezos upgraded his collection to include a newer, more powerful Gulfstream from the same series, this time a brand-new one. This G650ER is powered by twin Rolls-Royce BR 700–15 engines that have more thrust.
The Gulfstream G650ER is the long-range version of the older G650 and is now the longest-range business jet in the world, for which reason it's proven massively popular with celebrities. Not that the two can compare in any way, but Kim Kardashian also owns one, though hers spent a year in the shop for customization, bringing the total cost up to $150 million.
But Bezos has the upper hand: he owns an entire mini-fleet of private jets. He also owns a 2020 Piltaus PC-24, a 10-seater that retails for about $9 million – or, as Bezos would probably call it, "pocket change."
Bezos' fleet is valued at about $140 million, to which you add the $5.5 million he paid for the hangar and whatever goes into yearly maintenance of the aircraft.
Like most high-profile private jets, Bezos' jets are also tracked online and, in the process, their huge carbon footprint is exposed.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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