What If Santa—Like the Uber Rich in Their Private Planes—Opted to Block Tracking of His Sleigh?

This weekend, on Christmas Eve, more than two million people will follow Santa around the world on NORAD’s (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) Santa Tracker.

We’re lucky that Santa isn’t like the nearly 50,000 private aircraft owners who have pressured Congress and the FAA to block public disclosure of the movements of the aircraft they own. What began as a concern about security where corporations would submit evidence of documented security risks before their flights would be hidden morphed into demands to protect the privacy of ultra-rich aircraft owners. The jet-owning oligarchy has an average net worth of $190 million and is overwhelmingly male, over the age of 50, and concentrated in the industries of banking, finance, and real estate. And they don’t want you to know or think about the harm caused by their profligate travel.

The bah-humbug response of the jet-set is likely a response to reports highlighting the climate-killing impact of private jets. These jets spew out at least ten times the amount of greenhouse gases per passenger as a commercial jet flight. One percent of the U.S. population is responsible for 60 percent of U.S. aviation emissions, according to a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies.

The bah-humbug response of the jet-set is likely a response to reports highlighting the climate-killing impact of private jets.

Or perhaps these flying Scrooges are embarrassed by disclosure of their flights, like the one United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby took last June. Stuck with thousands of United passengers and crew during a Newark thunderstorm, Kirby abandoned ship and high-tailed it 17-miles to Teterboro Airport, the nation’s largest private jetport, where he boarded a private chartered jet that danced between the clouds on its way to Denver while his United customers were stuck sitting on the carpet in Newark’s crowded terminal. Or the case of billionaire Harlan Crowe being outed for a steady stream of undisclosed, lavish travel gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

We don’t need to worry about tracking Santa. He is not afraid of people knowing that his reindeer emit modest amounts of methane and his single sleigh doesn’t overtax the FAA traffic management services. In contrast, private aviation, which account for 16 percent of FAA air traffic management services only pay 2% of the FAA’s costs. While the rest of the flying public pay a 7.5 percent tax on airline fares, monies used to help fund the FAA, private jet flyers are excluded from this tax. If Santa hadn’t gone fossil-fuel free since he started, he might have left a lump of coal in the baggage hold of corporate jets.

We don’t need to worry about tracking Santa. He is not afraid of people knowing that his reindeer emit modest amounts of methane and his single sleigh doesn’t overtax the FAA traffic management services.

As Santa travels his global route this Christmas Eve, the Senate is considering extending a law embedded in the FAA Reauthorization bill that would allow growing numbers of private aircraft to have their flight records removed from public view. Since the 2018 FAA funding bill was passed, the number of planes whose use of public airspace hidden has doubled, with more than 15,000 planes removed from public tracking registries in the first seven months of 2022 alone. It’s likely that this anti-public accountability provision will continue to be passed without debate, unless our representatives hear us sing, “Silent Night, When No Corporate Jets Fly.”

The sky-rocketing growth of sophisticated private aircraft already creates challenges for Santa and these challenges will only grow. The nation’s current turbojet and turboprop fleet of 17,500 aircraft is expected to soar to 50,235 by 2043, according to a recent FAA forecast. Those additional 32,685 planes are more than four and a half times the 7,000 commercial aircraft currently traversing our skies, making Santa’s future trips—and yours—more likely to be delayed, especially in bad weather.

So, when you sit down to write your letter to Santa, take an extra minute and write another to your Member of Congress and ask them to insist that all flights in our public airspace, are like Santa’s, and not hidden from public view.