Claim:
Private jets make up 12% of total American air traffic as of November 2025.
Rating:
Context
According to FAA data, business jets, also known as private jets, made up 9% of total air traffic handled by the FAA in 2024 and 8% from January 2025 to September 2025, the most recently available data as of this writing.
On Nov. 5, 2025, amid a weeks-long U.S. government shutdown that ended Nov. 12, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it would cancel up to 10% of flights, sparking frustration among the public ahead of the holiday season. In response, film producer and philanthropist Abby Disney suggested that the agency shut down the private jets first.
Disney, the grandniece of animation and theme park tycoon Walt Disney, claimed private jets constituted 12% of the country’s air traffic, and that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy could simply ground 100% of private flights instead of grounding commercial planes. Here’s what she said in a Nov. 6 Instagram reel she posted for Patriotic Millionaires, a group of prosperous Americans “fighting against the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power” (emphasis ours):
Hey guys, Abby Disney here. I have an idea for Sean Duffy. He’s going to be shutting down 10% of air traffic. My goodness, that’s a lot! But he could even more easily shut down 12% of air traffic by just grounding private planes. Yes, private planes make up 12% of the air traffic. So, if you’re angry that your flight to see your grandma is canceled, or that you have to get to a business meeting and you can’t, I want you to remember — and maybe even write Sean Duffy — and tell him Mark Zuckerberg can wait.
The statistic she cited spread on X, Facebook and Threads. Snopes readers also wrote in to ask whether private jets make up 12% of American air traffic.
According to FAA data, business jets, also known as private jets, made up 9% of total air traffic handled by the FAA in 2024 and 8% from January 2025 to September 2025, the most recently available data as of this writing.
Since the statistic is wrong, we have rated this claim false. The FAA did not return a request for more information before the time of publication.
The National Business Aviation Association announced that the FAA began restricting private jets on Nov. 9. While the government has reopened, it was unclear, as of this writing, when full flight schedules will return.
Origin of rumor
In an email, Emily McCloskey, a spokesperson for Patriotic Millionaires, said the organization’s executive director, Erica Payne, has long cited the 12% data point.
McCloskey pointed to an article in the Global Times, a Chinese tabloid. The article — republished from a reputable French news agency, AFP — referenced data from air traffic regulator Eurocontrol, which reportedly found that private air travel’s global market share in 2021 was 12%. The article did not state whether this statistic also held true for the United States, nor did it compare this data point to air traffic. (Snopes has not independently verified this statistic, and Eurocontrol did not return a request for more information.)
McCloskey said a more up-to-date source would be a 2023 report produced by Patriotic Millionaires and the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, which cited 2019 FAA data on “General Aviation” to allege that private jets make up approximately one out of every six flights handled by the FAA — more than 16%.
The FAA categorizes private jet flights within “General Aviation,” a catch-all category for all civil aircraft not classified as air carriers or air taxis. Flights under this category might include medical evacuations, pilot training and firefighting.
A spokesperson for the Institute for Policy Studies, Olivia Alperstein, said in an email that the report authors used FAA General Aviation data on turbojet landings, specifically, as a “proxy for private jet flights.”
Turbojets — popular in military aircraft — use a specific type of gas turbine and are expensive, so it’s a fair assumption that noncommercial, civil-use turbojets are often private jets. However, it’s still not an exact estimate; for example, some medical evacuation companies use turbojets.
FAA data on private jets
The FAA provides monthly business jet reports, which are used by bankers and other economic analysts as “one indicator of overall economic conditions.”
Per the September 2025 release — the most recently available as of this writing — the FAA recorded 5,134,988 total private jet “operations,” which the FAA defines as all arrivals and landings, in 2024.
Per the FAA’s Operations Network, the “official source for all airport operations data,” the agency handled 56,768,072 flights in total. That means private jets made up 9% of total American air traffic in 2024.
A similar calculation showed private jets made up 8% of total air traffic from January to September 2025.
It is also worth noting that a March 2024 news release under former President Joe Biden’s administration stated that “private jets are 7% of flights handled by the FAA” — hence various news outlets, including The New York Times, citing a 7% statistic in 2024 reports.
The news release did not elaborate on the timeline of the statistic, but given how similar it was to the statistic Snopes arrived at, it was likely based on earlier FAA reports.
