Greenpeace misleads public with investigation into private jet flights during World Economic Forum
On Friday, January 13, 2023, Greenpeace published a message on its Dutch and international websites about emissions from private jets during the World Economic Forum in 2022.
That research and reporting is full of misleading claims. One is that a flight of only 21 km was operated and passengers should have traveled by train instead of by private jet. After research, that is not true at all.
The passage below is literally part of an article on the Greenpeace International website.
Meanwhile, the rich and powerful flock to Davos in ultra-polluting, socially inequitable private jets to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors. Davos has a perfectly adequate railway station, still these people can’t even be bothered to take the train for a trip as short as 21 km. Do we really believe that these are the people to solve the problems the world faces?
It gives the reader the impression that participants in the WEF, which takes place in Davos, had made a flight of 21 kilometers.
Greenpeace’s reporting was blindly adopted by many Dutch media without doing any research themselves. For example, Dutch newspaper Trouw published the following:
“Where did those private planes come from and where did they go? Just over half of the cases involved flights of less than 750 kilometres. In 38 percent of the cases, flights of less than 500 kilometers. According to Greenpeace, these are trips for which people could have taken the train or car. That would have been much cleaner. The shortest trip was one of 21 kilometers. “
A flight of 21 km because of the WEF seemed very unlikely to me. So I approached Greenpeace to ask if they could give me more details about the 21km flight. Although Klara Maria Schenk, Lead Transport Campaigner at Greenpeace, could not give me the registration of the aircraft, she did provide me with details such as the day the flight took place, the time and the airports the aircraft visited on May 25, 2022.
She also wrote to me:
“We cannot say it for sure, but it seems quite that multiple people chartered a plane, someone (or multiple) were likely dropped off 21 km further and the others flew to Cannes. 2 days later, the bunch at Altenrhein were picked up again by the same plane. Because the time frame corresponds quite nicely with the WEF (departing quite early the day after the WEF), there is a good possibility that this flight is connected to the WEF.”
This shows that the same person who was previously so adamant about traveling by train is actually not so sure whether this flight can be related to the WEF.
From my own research I was able to deduce that the 21 kilometer flight on May 25, 2022 was performed by a Cessna 510 Citation with the registration OE-FWH. It flew that day from the German airport Friedrichshafen to the Swiss St. Gallen and from there to Cannes. It remained there until May 27. Then the plane flew back the same route.
This flight has nothing to do with the WEF! The 21 km flight to St Gallen was a so-called empty leg. A positioning flight from the home base to pick up the passengers who have rented the aircraft. It is clear from the public records of ADSBexchange that this aircraft keeps returning to its base in Friedrichshafen. Incidentally, Greenpeace could also have noticed that the destination Cannes could have nothing to do with the WEF.
Greenpeace’s assumption that the passengers could have taken the train for the 21 km flight is therefore incorrect.
After I asked Klara Maria Schenk of Greenpeace about this 21 km flight, which is clearly associated with the WEF in the press release, she responded as follows: “If you read our documents carefully, you will see that we have not explicitly stated the 21 km flight as being attributable to the forum”
Which of course is nonsense!
The photo in this article was taken by Matti Blume
