Revealed: Ursula von der Leyen used private jets to travel just 31 miles

34 comments
  1. Paywalled. I’d be curious to know the public transport alternatives for that 31 mile trip. Worth noting that if she was travelling back from the destination of one of those short trips to somewhere substantially far, the jet would be flying over there to collect her regardless, so she might as well travel there in the Jet.

    Paris to London though? No reason why the train can’t be taken.

  2. Always cynical about this “we” they keep talking about in the media when they start saying what “we” need to do about climate change.

  3. If people really cared about the environment, private jet flights would already be banned or severely restricted. Per year private jets make around 120,000 flights between UK and EU alone, contributing 1 million tones of CO2 to the atmosphere. Her 31 mile trip is just a drop in the ocean.

  4. The Manchester United team flew to Leicester 2 weeks ago, its 110 miles..like 7 minutes in the air or something stupid…2 hours on coach…this shit happens all the time.

  5. Isn’t she the one that cries climate change all day – then uses all the funds for private jets?

    In other news, I almost got run out of the road because a black presidential car in my country and his mug entourage of bikers tried to split the traffic in half – at crazy speeds – unsafely to get through 5 minutes of traffic first to the presidential. I’m not even exaggerating… even an ambulance that is going on an emergency to save someone’s life, doesn’t drive that recklessly and aggressively. They are a force unto themselves.

    These people live in a world where they don’t believe what they preach. Biggest hipocrites.

    And to those who will say – president must get things done… bro… they rush to events like hours of theater and fine dining, and long trips to see a show, then sluggishly move around like kings and get drunk. They are all full of shit.

  6. I know it’s stupid and I hate private jets. But for heads of state or high ranking politicians like von der Leyen it simply comes down to cost. I recently watched this interesting video about why Macron rarely takes the train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoVOw-Ywu2M

    The reason being: Ground travel is often just really expensive with the security protocols that are in place for those high ranking politicians. Basically every bridge they drive over or under has to be blocked in advance. And the whole area has to be searched. Flying a plane is just way cheaper and a lot less disruptive in most cases. When Macron wasn’t president yet, he took the train all the time and I am sure he would like to do it now, since it makes great TV and would make him look down to earth, but it’s just too expensive.

  7. Rookie levels. The current Swedish government (Social democrats + The *Green* Party) used private jets to travel 25 miles, *six times* in a couple of months before they were caught:

    https://www.svt.se/nyheter/flog-fyra-mil-for-ministerhamtning (Swedish language, use Google Translate)

    > The ministers who have traveled are, in addition to Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Minister of Education Gustav Fridolin (MP), Minister of Upper Secondary Education and Knowledge Promotion Aida Hadzialic (S) and Minister of the Interior Anders Ygeman (S).

  8. As she was minister of defense in Germany, we said “von Leyen regiert”, which sounds like “von Laien regiert” and means “ruled by amateurs” …
    Is always our best going to Europe…

  9. *as a german who has seen her escapades in german politics for years*

    Woah! thats super shocking. She seemed to be such a reasonable and good politician! especially since she is from the most loved party of my country. she or her party never got involved in any other shady stuff like that befor!

  10. Please, tell me again, and again, how we will keep paying more for air tickets, so that you, sick, corrupted by power, European bureaucrats will be able to keep flying your private jets!

    Hypocrisy at its best! I’m so happy!

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