It is unlikely that Taylor Swift will be flying on the shortest private jet flights.
- Taylor Swift is being mocked on social media for her frequent private jet trips.
- Some flights may not be the result of the singer, as she quietly offloaded one of her jets in January.
- The shortest flights attributed to Swift could be for repositioning or maintenance purposes.
Taylor Swift is getting roasted for her private jet trips — and some of them might not even be hers.
Over the past week, people have taken to social media to make light of Swift’s jet-setting habits — from monitoring her flight to the Super Bowl to mocking some of the shorter trips that have shown up on jet-tracking sites.
“Taylor Swift on her way downstairs to grab her Door Dash order (which she also had delivered via private jet/helicopter),” one user wrote on X.
Other users on social media joked Swift would use her jet to “take out the trash” or ask a neighbor for a “cup of sugar.”
Some users appear to be referencing a series of flights that one of the jets associated with the singer took late last month.
But, Swift might not be responsible for the flights at all. The flights took place around the same time the singer quietly parted ways with her Dassault Falcon 900 jet last month, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration.
On January 30, the jet took two short flights between an airport in Illinois and one in Missouri, according to data from the jet-tracking website JetSpy. The first was 21 minutes and the second was just eight minutes. In a car, the less than 19-mile trip would have taken about 21 minutes, according to Google Maps.
Jack Sweeney, the college student known for tracking Swift and other celebrities’ aircraft on social media, posted on X via the account dedicated to tracking Swift’s jet: “These short flights are likely maintenance or demo flights.”
Swift still owns another private jet, a Dassault 7X.
Over the past few months, the shortest trips taken by her aircraft have been between 35-40 minutes, including trips between St. Louis and Nashville (an over 300-mile drive) and between Las Vegas and Burbank, California (an over 270-mile drive).
The singer owns property in both Nashville and Los Angeles. Many of her flights also appear to follow the path of her ongoing Eras Tour.
Swift’s shortest flight over the past year was an eight-minute flight last March, likely due to a pilot repositioning the aircraft between two Los Angeles-area airports, Van Nuys Airport and Bob Hope Airport, both north of the city.
Repositioning a private jet in the charters world is typically for operational needs, like dropping one customer off at one airport and then flying 10 minutes across town to a different airport to pick up another.
For ultrawealthy celebrities like Swift, who control the whereabouts of their own plane, it is many times more about convenience.
For example, a person may fly into a large international airport on the inbound but then reposition their plane to a smaller general aviation airport nearby to avoid the crowds and hassle on the outbound flight.
In Swift’s case, Van Nuys may have been more convenient for where she needed to be after her flight into Los Angeles, but Bob Hope was better located for flying out.
Swift has tried to mask her private jet travels
It’s far from the first time Swift has faced criticism for her jet travel. In 2022, Swift reportedly topped a list of celebrities with the most private-jet carbon emissions.
Last year, BI reported that the singer’s private jets spent more than 166 hours in flight during the initial US leg of her Eras tour.
In between concerts, she also spent a lot of time flying to Kansas City, where her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for the Chiefs. Among Swift’s most-flown-to airport of 2023, Kansas City’s Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport was third, according to JetSpy.
Swift’s spokesperson previously told BI the singer had purchased carbon credits to offset her jet use.
The singer has pushed back on attempts to track her travels. She’s attempted to fly incognito, using the FAA’s privacy ICAO aircraft address program, also known as PIA.
More recently, Swift threatened to sue the student who tracks her jet using public data.
“I think the people are interested,” Sweeney told Business Insider regarding the cease-and-desist letter sent to him by Swift’s lawyers. “You should have a decent expectation that your jet will be tracked, whether or not I do it as. After all, it is public information.”