Taylor Swift and Julian Assange chartered the same private jet
![Taylor Swift and Julian Assange chartered the same private jet Taylor Swift and Julian Assange chartered the same private jet](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/vistajet-private-jet-dubbed-football-84458465.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1024)
Where do the worlds of pop superstardom and international espionage collide? On board a $40 million private jet at an altitude of 12,500 meters, of course.
The jet that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange paid $500,000 for on Monday to fly from London to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands is, according to flight logs, no different from the one Taylor Swift chartered in February when she rushed from a concert in Japan to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce win the Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
Assange, 52, and Swift, 34, both chartered the 2017 Bombardier Global 6000 business jet, tail number 9H-VTD, from VistaJet airline, according to photographs of their respective trips.
The luxury aircraft has space for 14 passengers and seven sleeping places. The lounge chairs in the cabin can be converted into comfortable beds.
The jet, which sells for up to $40 million, can fly for 13 hours over a distance of 6,000 nautical miles, according to VistaJet’s website.
The aircraft has a spacious cabin with 1.88 m of headroom – plenty of room for the 1.88 m tall Swift.
The jet’s flight records also match the itineraries of each flight.
Records from February 10 show that the jet was flying from Tokyo to Los Angeles – just like Swift.
Entries from Monday and Tuesday show that the plane was flying on the same route that Assange followed, from London to Saipan with a stopover in Bangkok.
Both flights were closely followed by journalists and supporters around the world, but for very different reasons.
Assange took to the skies on Monday as part of an agreement with the United States that released him from a London prison for the first time in five years.
He was expected to plead guilty on Wednesday morning local time to conspiracy to obtain and publish national defense information, stemming from WikiLeak’s publication of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic files in 2010.
The aircraft initially landed in Bangkok, Thailand to refuel.
According to flight records, he landed in Saipan on Wednesday morning local time, touching down on American territory nearly 6,000 miles from California after reportedly refusing to set foot on the American mainland.
He was scheduled to appear in federal court on the remote island on Wednesday.
Swift’s requirements for the Jet 9H-VTD were completely different.
After playing a show in Tokyo in front of thousands of screaming fans, some worried whether she would be able to travel to the other side of the world the next day to watch Kelce play in the Super Bowl.
After the show concluded, Swift rushed to Haneda Airport and then flew across nine time zones and the date line to arrive in Los Angeles in time for the showdown in Las Vegas.
During the Swift travel drama, the aircraft became known as “The Football Era.”
VistaJet did not respond to requests for comment.