Here's the Insane Number of Flights Taylor Swift Took on Her Private Jets Last Year

But even knowing – and accepting – this, there are occasions when said lifestyle becomes grating for the regular guy or gal at home. This is all the more true when said guy or gal often despairs at having to wash out tin cans before throwing them out, or using paper straws that become unusable after just two sips, or who maybe is considering becoming vegan because the meat industry is such a large contributor to climate change.

Over the past couple of years, the spotlight on celebrities' love of private jets has shined hotter. Arguably, it all started when student Jack Sweeney started tracking Elon Musk's private jet, spinning that into a new hobby for internet sleuths with a bone to pick with wasteful celebrities. And, we assume, a successful business for Sweeney himself.

It's not so much that people expect celebrities not to fly private or to mingle with commoners on commercial airlines (though that would make for a fun day for those onboard), but rather that we're just now starting to realize the sheer number of flights these celebrities take over a relatively short timespan. It feels excessive even for our understanding of the A-list lifestyle.

Perhaps more infuriating is the knowledge that the distance covered with some of these flights could be easily – and relatively effortlessly – covered by car, in which case it would have a considerably smaller carbon footprint. These are the situations that no amount of "busy life" or "time is money" excuses can… well, excuse.

The biggest surprise in this sense in the past couple of years has been Taylor Swift, pop industry's biggest darling and biggest seller, the one who, until then, could never do no wrong. She's not the celebrity with the highest carbon footprint from flying private (that honor surprisingly goes to rapper Travis Scott), but she's still a big polluter.

Take, for instance, her travels in 2023. According to the same Jack Sweeney, Taylor's two private jets covered more than 178,000 miles (286,463 km) that year, which is the equivalent of flying around the earth 7 times. Most of these flights were domestic, too, which speaks volumes for Taylor's non-existent commitment to cutting down her carbon footprint.

Sweeney also notes that, in 2023 alone, Taylor was responsible for emitting more than 1,200 tons of CO2 with her two jets, a 2009 Dassault Falcon 7X and a 1994 Dassault Falcon 900. She sold the latter earlier this year, so expect this year's figures to be considerably smaller.

"Jet lag is a choice," Taylor Swift infamously said once as she made her way from Brazil, where she was on tour, to the Super Bowl to support boyfriend Travis Kelce. That's like Kate Moss saying, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," back in the day when waif-chic was the look.

Earlier this year, Taylor's legal representatives sent a very strongly-worded cease and desist letter to Sweeney, urging him to cease posting her flight data on social media. No direct threats were made (of the legal kind), but the letter claimed Sweeney was putting Swift's life in danger by exposing her to potential stalkers, who would thus learn of her whereabouts almost in real time.

For the record, what Sweeney is doing is not illegal, though it's highly unethical. Swift and Musk are just two of the famous people whose jets he's tracking; he's also used his bots to track aircraft belonging to the Kardashians/Jenners, Bill Gates, Roman Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs as they were rushing to stow their aircraft during the initial phase of sanctions, Jeff Bezos, or Steven Spielberg.

The flight paths of these private jets are protected by the FAA's privacy programs, which means regular people can't see the data.

Sweeney started out by creating 15 or so bots that would parse publicly available data, compiling it with the data collected from ADS-B transponders on planes to get the exact flight path of these jets. In due time, he also added other features, like carbon emissions and fuel consumption, but he never revealed whether the famous person was onboard. He probably wouldn't have even if he could have because that would have been illegal.

Sweeney tells one British tab that, since the cease and desist letter from Swift, which has failed to get him to cease and desist, he hasn't heard anything from her team about that possible lawsuit. He's convinced she's not bothered by the threat to her safety and privacy as much as she's bothered by the negative attention she's getting online. Videos like the one he's just compiled sure aren't helping with that last thing.