Taylor Swift’s Jet Flew from the Metro East to Chesterfield — And Back

That’s a lot of expense just to avoid St. Louis drivers

Taylor Swift’s jet (which has since been sold) was tracked taking a 13 minute flight from one end of St. Louis to the other.
Taylor Swift must know all too well the horrors of driving in St. Louis, because instead of braving city streets, her private jet recently took a 13-minute journey between Cahokia Heights to Chesterfield — twice.

The 28-mile flight went from Chesterfield (almost certainly the Spirit of Saint Louis Airport) to Cahokia Heights (almost certainly the misleadingly named Downtown St. Louis Airport) — and then, later that day, back again.

The trips were first reported by a Taylor Swift Jet tracking account on X (formerly known as Twitter). The account says they occurred on January 30.

The first flight flew from the Spirit of Saint Louis Airport to Cahokia Heights, a flight that took 26 minutes and cost $844 of fuel, according to the tracking account @SwiftJetNextDay. That produced two tons of CO2 emissions.

Later that day, the return flight from Cahokia Heights to Chesterfield took approximately $443 in jet fuel and produced 0.8342 tons of CO2 emissions, according to the tracker.

The internet has been in an uproar about Swift’s jet use and contribution to the production of carbon emissions in the days leading up to last night’s Super Bowl. As a possible result of this backlash, and of social media accounts like the one above tracking her movements, Swift sold one of her jets.

The jet sold for $7 million to Missouri-based car insurance company Car Shield, according to Economic Times.

The Illinois-Missouri flight is one of the last publicly tracked flights on Swift’s jet and it is unclear if she was personally traveling to St. Louis, where part of her extended family originally hails, or if the flights were for maintenance or testing.

Swift has attempted to take legal action against those tracking her jet with publicly available data, but the practice isn’t technically illegal, USA Today reports.

The wrecking ball wrecked, a bit.
A wrecking ball came in like Miley Cyrus at Berkeley’s City Hall today. All it wanted was to break its walls — at least, until the backhoe could take over.

The north county municipality invited journalists and other members of the public to a “demolition ceremony” at 10 a.m. this morning. Its release promised, “The demolition of the old city hall symbolizes a new chapter for Berkeley, one filled with opportunities for growth and progress.”

And no, that chapter does not involve Berkeley putting itself out of business. St. Louis County’s 90+ municipalities are largely hanging on, despite various efforts to merge them.

Instead, clearance of the building, located at 6140 North Hanley, is part of a project to improve Airport Road, a $5.4 million initiative that began last year and includes repaving the road from I-170 to North Florissant Road, along with new sidewalks and a bike path. The new City Hall is already up and running just three-tenths of a mile down Airport Road.

With that project, City Hall promises many good things afoot, with redevelopment initiatives including “mixed-use development, job creation, infrastructure enhancement and community engagement.”

But if the ceremony was high on symbolism, it was short on drama; the ball made just a handful of swings for assembled observers. Then they stuck the wrecking ball in the back of a truck and moved in with a non-symbolic backhoe to actually do the job.

The city manager told the crowd the demolition will be finished in the coming days.