Private jets landing in from Zurich Airport have increased by nearly 9% over the WEF 2025 compared to the summit in 2024, new data shows. Between 15 and 19 January 2024, the Swiss airport hosted 282 jets, whereas from 20 to 24 January 2025 there were 306 visiting the airport, data from Flightradar24 shows.
Compared to the previous week, two and a half more private jet trips have been made to Davos (306 compared to 124).
Why is this particularly worrying? Transport emissions are the main source of emissions of the WEF and a large part of them come from the disproportionate use of private jets. In 2023, Greenpeace analysed the use of private jets by participants to the WEF, and found that “of all these flights, 53% were short-haul flights below 750 km that could have easily been train or car trips.”
In this context, for its 2025 edition which started on Monday, 20th of January, the WEF explicitly asked participants to prioritise rail when getting to the summit by giving a 100% discount for those taking the train from Europe. However, use of private jets has increased.
Denise Auclair, head of the Travel Smart Campaign, says: “The WEF’s stepped-up efforts to promote travelling sustainably by rail didn’t manage to make a dent in arrivals by private jet. During the summit, we flagged that private jet activity was even higher than usual and that the WEF should put the topic on the Forum’s agenda. What’s the WEF going to do from now on? Will it take up the Wall Street Journal’s idea to set an example by banning travel by private jet to future WEF gatherings[1]? Or will it convene a serious initiative, for example on taxing private jets based on flight distance and fuel usage, as a fair measure to raise needed revenues for energy transition”.
T&E’s Travel Smart Campaign, together with several European organisations, monitored WEF participants’ travel plans for Davos. In December, we sent letters to about 100 corporations asking for commitments to avoid private jets and choose more sustainable means of travel, in light of the WEF’s policy of prioritising rail over other modes of transport. The French manufacturer Saint-Gobain said its CEO would travel by train, while the global consulting firm KPMG assured that none of its representatives would travel by private jet, but would use commercial aircraft or trains instead.
In order to show the huge climate impact of this unsustainable, unequal and ultra-expensive means of transport, we also calculated the emissions companies could save when travelling to Davos this year by using two illustrative examples from 2024. In the European example, 99% of emissions can be saved when travelling by train, whereas for a US company the reduction is 87% when travelling by commercial flight (see story here).
Editor’s note
[1] Wall Street Journal, The World Economic Forum Is Coming for Your Cars, 14 June 2023.