The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, brings business leaders, heads of government, central bankers, and other decision-makers under one roof to tackle problems like the economy, geopolitics, climate, AI, health, and more. The problem is that many are increasingly arriving in problem-causing private jets, one of the most climate-intensive ways to travel. According to a Greenpeace report, one private jet flight came in for every four Davos participants, and the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos typically draws about 2,500 to 3,000 people. Compared to 2024 and 2025, the number of private flights registered at the surrounding airports increased by around 10%.
Herwig Schuster, European campaigner with Greenpeace Austria, said, “It’s pure hypocrisy that the world’s most powerful and super-rich elite discuss global challenges and progress in Davos, while they literally burn the planet with the emissions of their private jets. The time for action is now. Governments must act to curb polluting luxury flights and tax the super-rich for the damage they cause,” according to a report by GreenPeace.
A study of private flight movements at the seven airports around Davos, Zurich, Geneva, Basel-Mulhouse, Bern, St. Gallen-Altenrhein, Friedrichshafen, and Munich, revealed that during WEF week 2025, 709 private flights above the normal level were registered. A year earlier, there were 628, while in 2023 there were 227 additional flights. It is no secret that private flights cause around ten times as much greenhouse gas emissions per passenger as a scheduled flight and around fifty times as much as a train ride. While not everyone could have made it by train, a significant number could manage.
Greenpeace CEE calculates that around 70% of the private jet routes could have been traveled by train. Nearly 20% of private flights departed from France, 13% from the UK, and almost the same, 12%, from Germany. The 56th Annual Meeting has no shortage of headline topics, from geoeconomic confrontation and global risks to economic disruption and digital change. But if Davos is serious about problem-solving, it should add one more problem to the agenda: the problem-causing private jets, and their scorching impact.
