Flying private is now a standard top exec perk

You’ll probably never hear a plane-with-only-two-parachutes joke featuring a crying baby, a chatty grandma, and the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. That’s because the besuited bunch is increasingly flying private—even as employers cut back on other lavish benefits for top executives.

The majority of Fortune 500 CEOs are now flying private on the company dime, according to the executive data firm Equilar. And data shows that company-provided private jet spending soared 19% between 2021 and 2024.

Sky-high spending

Corporate jet expenses at some blue-chip firms continued gaining altitude last year:

• Palantir shelled out $17.2 million to whisk its CEO, Alex Karp, around the world for work and personal travel in 2025, far more than the $7.7 million it spent the year before. The steep bill drew investor scrutiny, as Karp owns the aircraft chartered to Palantir.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s PJ travel cost Meta over $2.4 million last year, up from $968k in 2023.

Aside from acting as a talent retention tool, companies say funding sky Ubers for their top honchos is a personal security measure that’s become more necessary after the 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Last year, Starbucks cited safety concerns when it scrapped its $250k annual limit for free personal private flights for CEO Brian Niccols, who commutes from his home in Southern California to the company’s Seattle HQ.

Big picture: The C-suite expensing their private flights is yet another tailwind for the $80 billion+ private jet industry, which has benefited from the growing ranks of hyper-wealthy individuals.—SK