Op Ed by Chuck Collins, IPS Imagine someone promising you could eat three banana split sundaes a day and lose 50 lbs. in a month, no exercise required. You’d be skeptical, right?
How about this one: Private developers proposing to double the amount of hangar space for private luxury jets at Hanscom Field claim this will reduce the number of private jet flights and reduce carbon emissions. Independent research has debunked this. The question remains whether Governor Maura Healey will stop this massive expansion from going forward. A bit of background: The Massport-owned Hanscom Field outside Boston (not the Air Force Base) is already New England’s second busiest airport after Logan. It’s also the region’s largest private jet airport, with an estimated 38,000 annual jet operations. A year ago, two private developer firms submitted a joint proposal to dramatically expand Hanscom’s private jet facilities. This March, they submitted a Draft Environmental Impact statement (DEIR) claiming this massive expansion will be “net zero” — and will somehow decrease flights and emissions. In the face of record temperature rises in 2023, there’s greater scrutiny of luxury private jet travel. Private jet travel is perhaps the most carbon-intensive form of travel on the planet, emitting 10 to 20 times more pollution per passenger than commercial flights. According to the developers, there’s an acute crisis of unhoused private jets flying about looking for parking. Lack of hangar space, they contend, means that private jets must drop their well-heeled passengers off at Hanscom and then “ferry flight” to another regional airport for parking (but not Boston Logan, which has no housing for private jets, nor space for such housing). More hangars, they claim, could eliminate 3,543 ferry flights a year. Last fall, I co-authored a report that found that half the flights in and out of Hanscom were to luxury and recreation destinations. Out of 31,599 private jet operations, we identified just one aircraft — making fewer than 20 trips — that fit the definition of a ferry flight. A private jet owned by billionaire Arthur S. Demoulas regularly travels from Hanscom to Nashua. Now another independent researcher, Industrial Economics, Inc., working with a larger data set, has issued a report disputing the developers’ projection. They identify only 132 ferry flight reductions — which would be offset by adding 6,000 flights a year, contributing an additional 150,000 tons of emissions. Their conclusion: “Emissions associated with full utilization of planned capacity far outweigh any emissions savings…by a factor of 950 to 3,900.” Private jet consumption mirrors the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest 0.1%. The median wealth of a private jet owner, according to WealthX, is $190 million. As inequality increases, demand for private jets is surging — just look at the private jet traffic for the Super Bowl, eclipse-watching, and the Masters golf tournament. The private jet lobby claims that “sustainable aviation fuels” will reduce its carbon footprint, which the developer’s proposal also mentions. But while there is a tiny nugget of possibility for alternative sources of fuel, there is currently no realistic or scalable alternative to kerosene-based fuels that would meet current aviation needs, let alone projections for future growth. Statewide opposition to the project is growing — and some policy makers are getting the message. “I know the destruction you folks intend to wreak on Massachusetts and I resent it,” said state Senator Mike Barrett, who represents the four towns where Hanscom is located. “Please don’t erect these bogus environmental rationales for something that has nothing whatsoever to do with relieving the crisis that faces us in terms of climate,” Barrett said at the developers’ public hearing. “Just be honest about it. This is all about becoming a little richer yourselves by helping people even richer than you.” The private jet lobby represents the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet, so they’re used to getting their way. But don’t let their lawyers and PR firms cloud your common sense. The hard truth is you can’t eat three banana splits a day, sit on the couch, and lose 50 lbs. And you can’t build a massive private jet facility and save the planet. *Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. He’s a coauthor of the IPS reports “High Flyers 2023: How Ultra-Rich Private Jet Travel Costs the Rest of Us and Burns Up the Planet” and “Hanscom High Flyers: Private Jet Excess Doesn’t Justify Airport Expansion.”*
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