Just Stop Oil sprays private jets and ‘targets Taylor Swift’s plane’ at Stansted Airport

June 20, 2024

Climate protesters from the organization “Just Stop Oil” filmed themselves breaking into a private airfield and spraying their jets orange.

Their target was Taylor Swift’s private jet, with which the superstar arrived in the UK for her Eras tour.

The group stated: “Jennifer and Cole have cut through the fence at Stansted’s private airport where Taylor Swift’s jet is parked and are calling for an emergency deal to end fossil fuel use by 2030.”

Two activists appear to be using a circular saw to cut through a chain-link fence protecting Stansted Airport’s private airstrip, where they say Taylor Swift’s jet is currently stationed.

The couple painted two private jets with fire extinguishers filled with orange paint around 5 a.m. Thursday and took selfies in front of the damaged planes.

Just Stop Oil protesters Jennifer Kowalski (left), 28, a former sustainability manager from Dumbarton, and Cole Macdonald, 22, from Brighton, after spraying orange paint on private jets parked at London Stansted. (Just Stop Oil/PA Wire)

In a statement from the group, 22-year-old Cole Macdonald from Brighton said: “We live in two worlds: one where billionaires live in luxury and can fly away in private jets. The other world where countless millions of people are forced into intolerable conditions.”

“Meanwhile, this system that allows a few to accumulate extreme wealth to the detriment of everyone else is destroying the conditions necessary to support human life in a rapidly accelerating, never-ending ‘summer of cruelty.’ Billionaires are not untouchable, climate change will affect each and every one of us.”

For weeks, there has been intense speculation on social media about singer Taylor Swift’s travels in private jets. People point out the CO2 emissions that are created with each flight and that warm the environment.

Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida and operator of social media accounts that track the private jets, claimed that Swift flew around 178,000 miles on her two jets in 2023.

Swift’s lawyers then served Sweeney with a cease and desist order and accused the 21-year-old of “stalking and harassment.”

A spokesman for Stansted Airport said The Independent: “Just after 5am, Essex Police arrested two protesters who had entered the airfield’s private aviation area, away from the runway and main passenger terminal.

“As a precautionary measure, the operation of the runways has been suspended for a short period of time, however air traffic has not been interrupted and airport and flight operations are running as usual.”