Pastors and Planes – May 2024

Ministry Watch ^ | June 11, 2024 | Warren Cole Smith

[Morgana]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Barry Bowen of The Trinity Foundation compiled the flight information for this project.

In February 2023, MinistryWatch launched a collaboration with the Trinity Foundation to publish a list of all the private planes belonging to pastors and Christian ministries. For several months we updated that list, but – as things sometimes do – the monthly publication of that list went on hiatus.

But we’re back! Beginning last month, we will publish a list of planes and some basic information about their usage by pastors and ministries.

This month’s list is below. Here are a few highlights:

The Trinity Foundation currently tracks 64 ministries that have airplanes.

During May, these planes made a total of 440 flights.

Operating costs alone topped $2 million for the month. These costs do not include the cost of the plane itself.

Liberty University is by far the biggest user of private aircraft. It typically holds that position month in and month out.

If you find this information interesting or helpful, you might want to follow The Trinity Foundation’s daily X feed. You can find that account, @PastorPlanes, here.) But we think that for most people this monthly list will be more digestible and easier to read.

It’s important to name a couple of important caveats regarding this list:

Estimating operating costs is, at best, a rough art. Fuel costs vary widely and are constantly changing. Fixed costs per hour vary depending on the amount of time in the air. We used a variety of publicly available sources to arrive at the operating costs lists, using the assumption that the plane would fly 200 hours per year.

[Raycpa]

Having a private plane isn’t evidence that it’s a misuse of funds. Between the extra time it takes to go commercial and the frequency of flights to the same places a private plane could make a lot of financial sense.

unless they have a comparison to the cost of private versus the cost of commercial and the allocated time it takes to use commercial versus the amount of time they could use pastoral time for other purposes this study in and of itself means nothing

[PAR35]

Liberty University is by far the biggest user of private aircraft.

I don't know what the results would be, but a more fair comparison would be to compare Liberty to other large private universities in areas without decent scheduled service. Lynchburg is a 3 hour drive to Dulles, for example, a bit more to Reagan. Baylor (the closest match I could think of), on the other hand, is a little over half that to DFW. BYU is about 45 minutes to the Salt Lake City airport (that's local by Texas standards).

[GMThrust]

That’s a good point. I used to fly a beechjet for Florida State recruiting. They did not own the plane, they leased it from the company I flew for. During recruiting season you would see University jets from every big school. They all owned a small fleet of aircraft.

[Organic Panic]

It’s the LORD’S plane. (you’re just not allowed on it.)