Elon Musk's private jets make 441 flights and emit annual carbon output of 322 average Americans
2:43 AM EST, December 18, 2023
In 2023, up until December 14th, both planes have collectively taken off 441 times. The report does not include another Gulfstream G550 (reg. N502SX) as it is registered under SpaceX, not Musk himself. This year, it made 246 flights, totaling about 630 hours.
Based on information from JetSpy, Elon Musk currently owns two private jets:
- Gulfstream G650ER (reg. N628TS),
- Gulfstream G550 (reg. N272BG).
How often does Elon Musk fly?
The annual average for both jets is a mere 2.5 hours of flight time each, roughly the travel time from Hawthorne in California, where SpaceX is headquartered, to Brownsville in Texas, where Tesla and the SpaceX spaceport are located. The most common flight destinations for G650 are Austin in Texas, Oakland, and San Jose.
The G650ER jet has completed 166 flights this year, while the other jet accounted for 275 flights. The longest flight this year - a 13-hour trip - was to Tokyo in August, where Musk, his partner Grimes, and their three-year-old son X were sighted. Musk also visited Israel in November.
Interestingly, the briefest flight of Musk's airplane lasted only 5 minutes. Data suggest that the plane remained at Long Beach airport, indicating the operation could have been merely a change of parking position at the airport.
According to JetSpy, the billionaire's jets are estimated to have emitted around 5689 tons of CO2 during the past year. "To put this into perspective, an average resident of the United States is responsible for producing about 16 tons of carbon dioxide per year," states the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
