Bernard Arnault, the world’s second-richest man, has sacrificed the comfort of his ultra-luxury jet and switched to rented aircraft to escape the tracking of his flights on social media, reports The Times.
The multibillionaire founder of the LVMH luxury goods empire said he had sold his company’s Bombardier Global 7500, the biggest and longest-range business aircraft built, because his movements were being broadcast on Twitter accounts aimed at shaming him over its carbon emissions.
“With all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it,” Arnault, 73, told Radio Classique, a station owned by his group. “The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes,” he said.
Arnault’s remarks solved a mystery for the two accounts, "I Fly Bernard" and B"ernard’s Airplane", that targeted him and his jet this year as a symbol of the polluting rich, attracting a total following of 100,000. “So, Bernard, you’re hiding?”, asked a post on I Fly Bernard after the jet disappeared from tracking websites in the summer.
According to the Bernard’s Airplane tracker, the Arnault jet made 18 flights in May, leaving 176 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which compares with an average person’s carbon footprint of 10-11 tonnes annually. The aircraft, registered to LVMH, was used by company personnel as well as by Arnault and his family.
The I Fly Bernard account said: “The billionaires are destroying the planet with their way of life . . . This Twitter account has the humble ambition of exposing a little part of this by following the trips of their ultra-polluting private aircraft.”
Indignation over the tonnes of carbon being left in the atmosphere by private jets has prompted demands from French left-wing parties for a ban or punitive taxes.