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Greta Thunberg Private Jet: The Myth, and How She Actually Crossed the Atlantic

Does Greta Thunberg have a private jet? No record shows one. She avoids flying over emissions and crossed the Atlantic by yacht in 2019. How she travels.

By Wijet EditorsUpdated

At a glance

Greta Thunberg and flying

Owns a private jet
No record of one
No aircraft under her name in the FAA registry
2019 Atlantic crossing
Racing yacht, about 15 days
CBS New York, August 2019
Stated reason
Avoiding aviation emissions
Gas emissions and carbon footprint, per CBS
Checked
November 6, 2026
FAA registry name search, US registrations only

No record or report shows Greta Thunberg with a private jet. She is best known for refusing to fly at all because of aviation emissions, and in 2019 she crossed the Atlantic on a racing yacht to reach a United Nations climate summit in New York. The jet rumor circulates anyway, and it is worth looking at where it comes from.

The short answer

Not on any record we found. No source we opened reports that Greta Thunberg owns or uses a private jet, and the FAA registry returns no aircraft under her name. She refused to fly over emissions, CBS New York reported, and in 2019 she sailed to New York instead.

Does Greta Thunberg Have a Private Jet?

There is no evidence of it. A search of the FAA aircraft registry for the name THUNBERG on November 6, 2026 returned zero aircraft. That result needs a caveat: Thunberg is Swedish, and the FAA registry only covers aircraft registered in the United States. A Swedish or other foreign registration would not show up there.

The caveat does not change the conclusion, because the stronger evidence is behavioral and public. Major news outlets covered her decision not to fly in detail in 2019, and we found no outlet reporting that she had changed course and bought or chartered a private jet.

Owners of private aircraft often register them through companies, so a registry search alone can never prove that someone has never owned one. Here the registry result is only one part of the case. The reporting is the other part, and it points the same way.

The 2019 Atlantic Crossing

In August 2019 Thunberg traveled from England to New York by sea. CBS New York reported that she spent 15 days crossing about 3,000 miles of the Atlantic and arrived in Lower Manhattan on August 28, 2019. The destination was a United Nations climate summit on September 23, 2019. CBS reported that she avoided flying because of “gas emissions and carbon footprint.”

The boat was a racing yacht, Malizia II, according to Al Jazeera’s coverage of the departure, and the Associated Press reported that the trip left Plymouth, England, on a Wednesday in mid-August 2019.

A racing yacht is about as far from private aviation as a long-distance trip gets, and that contrast is part of why the story spread so widely.

The return to Europe

After the New York summit Thunberg did not fly home either. Classic Sailor reported on December 3, 2019, that she arrived in Lisbon after about three weeks at sea from Virginia, aboard La Vagabonde, a 45-foot catamaran owned by the YouTube sailors Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu. That was a different boat from the Malizia II.

The Criticism of the Crossing, Fairly Put

The crossing drew criticism, and one point recurs. Reports noted that members of the yacht’s sailing team had to fly to the United States to bring the boat back to Europe.

In an Associated Press report carried by the Marshall Independent, a Team Malizia spokeswoman said crew would have to fly over because “we only have one boat, so they cannot easily sail over to meet them.” The team said the emissions from those flights would be offset.

The criticism is fair as a factual observation: a sailing trip for one passenger still involved flights for crew. The defense is also fair: the point of the trip was that the passenger did not fly, and the boat belonged to a racing team that was going to need crew movements regardless. Both statements can be true at the same time. We report the criticism and the response and leave the judgment to the reader.

Why the Private Jet Rumor Spreads

Rumors about Thunberg and private jets tend to follow a pattern. A photo of a jet, a celebrity, or an unrelated climate activist circulates with a caption naming her. The caption travels faster than any fact-check.

We do not repeat any of those claims here, because we found no source behind them. If you see a screenshot claiming she flew private, look for the original outlet, a date, and an aircraft registration number. A real report on private jet travel has all three. A rumor usually has none.

Private Jets and Emissions: Why the Debate Exists

Her stance exists inside a larger argument about aviation. Private jets carry few passengers, so the emissions per passenger are higher than on a typical airline flight. That is the reason celebrities who fly private draw so much attention from climate critics. We do not quote emission figures here because we did not source them for this page.

If you want to see how that argument plays out for other well-known flyers, read our celebrity private jets hub, and the pages on Leonardo DiCaprio and Taylor Swift.

For readers who care about the footprint of a trip, one option is sharing a flight instead of using a whole aircraft. Our guide to semi-private flights explains how that works.

How We Checked

On November 6, 2026 we searched the FAA aircraft registry by the name THUNBERG and found no aircraft. The registry only lists US registrations, so we did not treat the empty result as proof by itself. We then read contemporaneous reporting on her 2019 crossing from CBS New York and looked for any outlet reporting that she uses a private jet. We found none.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Greta Thunberg fly?
She has avoided flying because of aviation emissions, by her own public stance and in press coverage. CBS New York reported that in 2019 she crossed the Atlantic by racing yacht, about 15 days, instead of taking a plane. We found no source reporting that she changed that policy.
How does Greta Thunberg travel?
CBS New York reported her 15-day 2019 Atlantic crossing by racing yacht, made so she would not fly. We do not track her current movements, and we found no report of her using a private jet.
How many private jets does Greta Thunberg own?
None that we could find. The FAA registry returned no aircraft under her name, though it only covers US registrations, and no outlet we found reports her owning or using a private jet.

Sources

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