At the Last Minute, Government Shutdown Flight Restrictions Came for the Private Jets

As Senate Democrats crossed the aisle to reopen the government on Monday night, helping to pass a budget criticized for “making the largest cut to Medicaid in American history to pay for the largest tax break for billionaires in American history,” those billionaires’ preferred mode of travel was in the midst of a major setback: they’re reportedly banned at 12 major airports.

On Sunday, Ed Bolen president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), which is a lobby for the private jet business, said his organization’s press release that along with the previously announced flight restrictions at 40 U.S. airports were additional restrictions that “will effectively prohibit business aviation operations at 12 of those airports, disproportionately impacting general aviation, an industry that creates more than a million jobs, generates $340 billion in economic impact and supports humanitarian flights every day.”

French economist Thomas Piketty frames private jet usage a little differently, claiming that they should be banned as a visible penalty on the rich for their disproportional contributions to climate change, and that such a ban would help the poor feel involved. “We have to try to do everything we can to convince these groups that the people at the top are paying their fair share. You have to start right at the very top, [with] people who would take a private jet.”

Earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump used a Truth Social post to attack air traffic controllers who stayed home, or sought other work, while their jobs were unpaid amid the government shutdown. He said their pay could be “docked” and that anyone who wanted to take time off in the future should quit, and be “quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job on the Brand New State of the Art Equipment, the best in the World, that we are in the process of ordering.”

The threat of a temporary crackdown on private jet travel was still alive as of Monday night as Senate passage of the bill sent it to the House. House members were not all in Washington D.C. at the time, and speaker Mike Johnson said around the time of the Senate bill’s passage that they had 36 hours to return.

According to the NBAA, House members with access to private jets will not be able to land them at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, because it’s on the list of 12 currently grounding private jets. The rest are: