Megastar Taylor Swift sold one of her jets, but she still flies in style in an ultra-luxurious private plane.
.Taylor Swift sold one of her private jets (a Dassault 900) on January 30th, but she kept her Dassault Falcon 7X with a range of 6,850 miles.
.Taylor Swift has a strong affinity for the number 13, which is reflected in her private jet’s registration number and her personal history with the number.
.Swift’s private jet usage has been controversial among her fans due to environmental concerns.
Taylor Swift built her colossal empire (now worth an estimated $1 billion) through songwriting, singing, and most recently, her blockbuster Eras Tour. Having sold hundreds of millions of albums, Swift is the most successful artist in the industry today, and the proud owner of a Dassault Falcon 900, and a Dassault 7x.
Her most talked about possession (apart from several luxurious real estate properties), Taylor’s “number 13” private jet is certainly among the most interesting things she owns. The interior of Swift’s private jet boasts twelve plush seats for her famous friends, and the aircraft registration number ends with her initials (TS) – N898TS.
Updated, May 2024: In late May, Gizmodo (via Yahoo!) reported that Congress passed legislation making it “basically impossible” to track Taylor Swift’s jet. Swift has long objected to the tracking of her private jets by college student Jack Sweeney, and per Gizmodo, the era of jet tracking may be coming to a close:
“An amendment in the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill that was passed [in May] will allow private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information. President Joe Biden signed the FAA bill into law on May 16th, after it passed in the Senate 88-4 and the House 387 to 26. “Jet tracking has been made possible up until this point because private plane owners were forced to register aircraft ownership information with the FAA civil registry.
“That registry has been public until now, allowing for those data points to be combined with open radar mapping to understand where and when certain planes were traveling. It’s through this public information that online enthusiasts have been able to track the jet activity of America’s [one] percent.”
Why Taylor Swift Bought Her Number 13 Jet
Sidestepping all of the well-known superstitions surrounding the supposedly unlucky number 13, the Grammy Award winner has some solid reasons for owning her luxurious jet. It’s almost common knowledge at this point that Taylor was born in December 1989 (due to her album 1989), and her birthday is the 13th; many individuals view their birthday as a personal “lucky number.” Swift turned 13 on Friday the 13th; December 13th 2002 fell on a Friday.
Her first album reached gold status in just 13 weeks, and Swift’s first number one hit happened to feature a 13 second-long intro. “Swiftipedia” quotes an interview with Taylor, where she provided a detailed accounting of her penchant for (and history with) the number 13:
“I was born on the 13th, I turned 13 on Friday the 13th, my first album went gold in 13 weeks. Also, my first song that ever went number 1, it had a 13 second intro, I didn’t even do that on purpose!
And every time I’ve ever won an award at an award show, I’ve either been seated in the 13th row, or row M, which is the 13th letter. And when I won the Horizon Award at the CMA awards, the producer came up to me when I was sound-checking and he said, ‘Alright, we’re gonna go in 13 seconds!’ There are so many numbers!
Understandably, she is borderline obsessed with the number 13, and has featured it in her music video for “Ready for It?” In 2020, the singer was excited about turning 31, and teased her fans with her Evermore album (“31” is the number “13” reversed). Another more recent reference to the lucky digit may exist; Swift won the “Music Video Of The Year” award at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), wearing a dazzling dress she previously wore at the 2009 awards (almost thirteen years prior).
One other numerically significant feature is associated with Taylor Swift’s private jet, the interior of which boasts 12 stylish seats. In more esoteric schools of thought, the number twelve is connected with everything “heavenly” or celestial. There are twelve months in a year, twelve signs in the zodiac, and twelve celestial stations; it is believed by some to be a protective number.
Frequent Flyers On Taylor’s Lucky Number 13 Jet
According to Cosmopolitan, Swift’s “girl squad” is a roster of celebrities and models like Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Emma Stone, Lena Dunham, and Cara Delevingne. Some of her famous friends have featured on her hit single “Bad Blood,” from the album 1989 (2014). Swift’s affection for her closest friends was reflected in the Eras Tour’s fan revived tradition of exchanging handmare friendship bracelets:
Trading colorful, beaded friendship bracelets has officially become a fun activity for attendees of Swift’s sweeping Eras stadium tour, with fans taking to social media to show off their arms full of fun bracelets that make references to various Swift songs, album eras, inside jokes among fans and lyrics.
While how the trend started seems to be in direct reference to the lyrics of Swift’s Midnights track, the multi-Grammy winner also shared an arm full of friendship bracelets to Instagram in 2019, leading up to the release of her Lover album. Of course, it’s not just Swift’s female friends occupying the “number 13” jet’s seats, as she reportedly used the plane to transport former boyfriend Conor Kennedy (son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) to visit her hometown of Nashville early in her career.
In 2012 (while she was dating One Direction member Harry Styles), Swift flew him to the Jingle Bell Ball concert in London. Most recently, Swift has been using her jet to attend football games in support of her boyfriend Travis Kelce, but it was in heavy use between Eras Tour dates, too.
Taylor Swift’s Private Jet Is Controversial, Even Among Her Biggest Fans
As the world grapples with worsening climate change and attempts to curb carbon emissions, Swift has endured a significant share of criticism for choosing her private jet over flying commercial. According to an estimate from August 2022, Swift made roughly 170 trips around the world in her private jet in that year alone. In August 2023, Insider.com reported that Swift’s “private jets have spent over 166 hours crisscrossing the US” in the course of her Eras Tour, adding that Swift owned at least two vessels:
The singer has two multi-million dollar planes: a Dassault Falcon 7X, registered N621MM under Island Jet Inc, and a Dassault Falcon 900, registered N898TS under SATA LLC. Both companies are registered to the same address as Taylor Swift Productions in Nashville, according to Tennessee Secretary of State documents.
Taylor Swift has earned a legacy for herself with her singing career – this $40 million addition to her private fleet is just a tiny portion of her colossal, billion-dollar fortune.
