Taylor Swift Sold One of Her Two Private Jets Before Vandalism Incident
The video was dramatic: climate activists filmed themselves slicing through an airport’s security fence, entered the private terminal, and used a fire extinguisher to vandalize jets with orange paint. They add that they’ve used an online flight tracker to locate Taylor Swift’s private airplane. There’s only one problem: None of the planes they tagged belonged to the pop star. And the reason they messed up might be that Taylor Swift had just sold one of her private jets.
This is the latest in a series of high-profile vandalizations by the Just Stop Oil climate activist group. The group of protestors has glued themselves to famous art in museums and even threw tomato soup at one work by Vincent van Gogh. They have also sprayed their signature orange paint on landmarks including Stonehenge.
The two Just Stop Oil vandals who broke into London’s Heathrow airport were obviously targeting Taylor Swift. In fact, one of the vandals was once a die-hard “Swiftie.” A photo of her backstage with Taylor Swift herself–nine years ago–has surfaced.
They knew Taylor Swift was bringing her “Eras” tour to London, prior to planning the stunt. They then used a public website that shows flight plans to figure out when her private jet was landing. Just two hours later, they broke into London Heathrow. This all just one day after the Stonehenge vandalism, a one-two-punch planned to gain global publicity.
Why Taylor Swift? Vandalizing the famous singer’s jet would be a global news story.
In addition, the pop star has been criticized for carbon emissions from her private jet. My colleague, Barnell Anderson, reported that in the first half of 2023 alone, Taylor Swift’s jet made 166 separate flights. Obviously, much of this travel was due to the Eras tour. But critics have pointed out that the rest of her crew drove between U.S. destinations while Swift chose to fly. And like other celebrities, Swift also uses her jet to visit people such as her boyfriend, Travis Kelce of the NFL.
Both of the vandals were arrested “on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with the use or operation of national infrastructure.” But the plot twist was that they failed to hit Swift’s plane. The reason may have been that they were looking for the wrong plane. And it seems they knew they messed up.
Rewind to December 2023 and Taylor Swift was in some hot water for her private jet use. After a long summer traveling across the U.S. for her Eras tour, Swift landed at the #1 spot on the “Yard” sustainability marketing agency’s list of worst celebrity private jet CO2 emissions. Her lawyers even sent a cease-and-desist to a college student who compiles celebrity private jet emissions data from publicly-available flight information and publishes it. But that case didn’t go anywhere.
In February 2024, Taylor Swift sold one of her two jets. It was a Dassault Falcon 900LX she’d paid $40 million for. The buyer was the Car Shield insurance company, based in Missouri. The jet was reportedly worth just $7 million on the used market, though the final sales price isn’t public.
That just left Swift’s much larger Dassault Falcon 7X, which she originally paid $54 million for. The move confused some climate activists because the 900LX was the more efficient of the two. But some Swifties pointed out that the 900LX had a 6’2″ cabin height while Swift had a 6’5″ boyfriend.
It seems a bit sloppy that Just Stop Oil activists went through all the trouble of breaking into a London airport and getting arrested, just to spray paint the wrong plane. But perhaps they were looking for Taylor Swift’s Falcon 900LX which was instantly recognizable with her custom tail number ending in “TS” (N898TS).
The plane they spray painted had a N1875A tail number. A simple Google search shows this is a Gulfstream that belongs to a bank. And it looks like they knew this. You can see their original Instagram post embedded below. But they said, “JUST STOP OIL PAINT PRIVATE JETS HOURS AFTER TAYLOR SWIFT’S LANDS.” Notice that they very carefully never claimed that they had successfully painted Swift’s plane.
