Rishi Sunak most frequent UK flyer among recent PMs

Rishi Sunak has utilized RAF jets and helicopters for home flights much often than the UK's erstwhile 3 premier ministers, the BBC tin reveal.

Ministry of Defence information amusement helium took astir 1 specified formation a week during his archetypal 7 months successful office.

The premier curate has been accused of hypocrisy for flying abbreviated journeys domestically, fixed his pledges to curb planet-warming c emissions.

But Mr Sunak has said aerial question was the "most effectual usage of my time".

In effect to Freedom of Information requests, the BBC was told the fig of home flights connected Command Support Air Transport craft breached down by premier curate betwixt July 2016 and April 2023.

The RAF part - known arsenic 32 Squadron - operates 2 Dassault Falcon 900LX jets and a chopper to transport the PM and different ministers domestically.

In total, Mr Sunak boarded 23 home flights connected these craft successful 187 days, which is 1 each 8 days connected average.

Two caveats to carnivore successful caput are the brevity of Ms Truss's clip successful Downing Street, and the limitations connected Mr Johnson's question during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The BBC initially requested information connected the fig of flights each UK premier curate since Tony Blair had taken utilizing a subject craft to question domestically. But the MoD rejected the petition connected outgo grounds and advised asking for information connected those flights since Mrs May.

The premier curate sometimes has entree to an RAF Voyager level for overseas trips, and the authorities besides charters backstage flights connected craft operated by Titan Airways.

Separately, Mr Sunak has accepted much than £70,000 worthy of backstage pitchy and chopper question to Conservative Party events from governmental donors this year.

Mr Sunak's usage of flights for UK engagements has travel nether aggravated scrutiny, with critics questioning wherefore helium had not utilized the bid alternatively of RAF craft for comparatively abbreviated trips to Newquay, Dover and Leeds this year.

Last month, Mr Sunak said those who accidental "no 1 should instrumentality a plane" successful their attack to clime alteration were "completely, and utterly wrong".

Labour said the PM was "developing an costly wont of swanning astir connected backstage jets courtesy of the taxpayer".

The party's lawman leader, Angela Rayner, suggested Mr Sunak had breached the ministerial code, which states helium is expected to usage scheduled flights, unless "it is indispensable to question by air".

In his speech astatine the COP27 clime acme past year, Mr Sunak said it was "morally close to honour" the UK's committedness to trim c emissions.

The UK has acceptable a legally binding people of achieving net-zero c emissions by 2050, arsenic portion of the planetary effort to avert the worst effects of clime change.

Flights nutrient greenhouse gases - chiefly c dioxide (CO2) - from burning fuel, and these emissions lend to planetary warming.

Emissions per kilometre travelled from home flights are importantly worse than immoderate different signifier of transport, and backstage jets typically nutrient much CO2 than commercialized flights.

But c emissions alteration considerably depending connected the size of the plane, however businesslike its engines are, and however galore passengers it carries.

In 2019, earlier the pandemic struck, planetary and home UK aviation accounted for 8% of the UK's full greenhouse state emissions.

Anna Hughes, whose Flight Free UK run urges radical to alert little for the involvement of the climate, said Mr Sunak's transport choices were "frustrating".

She said if leaders demonstrated "the benignant of behaviour that we each request to follow to avert the clime crisis, it communicates that it's superior and real".

"You can't conscionable accidental I'm the premier minister, I'm excessively engaged and important," she added.

One erstwhile authoritative with cognition of ministerial question anterior to Mr Sunak's premiership said transport choices "were based connected time", adding the bid would beryllium utilized "nine times retired of ten".

The erstwhile official, who did not privation to beryllium named, said they "had entree to the PM's diary and each azygous infinitesimal of each time is accounted for".

"In bid to execute a agelong visit, the lone mode was to usage an aircraft," they said.

A Downing Street spokesperson said ministers "sometimes necessitate the usage of non-commercial aerial travel".

"This is simply a modular signifier for governments astir the satellite and this has consistently been the lawsuit nether successive UK administrations of each governmental colours," the spokesperson said.

"Value for money, security, and clip ratio is taken into relationship successful each question decisions and each flights are c offset."

Although we person the fig of home flights Mr Sunak has taken up to April this year, we don't cognize the details of each those journeys, and what craft helium used.

We did inquire for that information, but the MoD said the "RAF does not clasp records for aerial miles flown by aircraft", and withheld information connected the PM's trips.

That means we can't cipher the wide c footprint of Mr Sunak's home flights during his archetypal 7 months successful office.

What we tin bash is estimation the c emissions of immoderate idiosyncratic flights, utilizing accusation successful the nationalist domain.

For example, connected 19 January, the premier curate flew from RAF Northolt successful westbound London to Blackpool Airport connected a Dassault Falcon 900LX.

A fig of aviation websites accidental the Falcon has a substance depletion of astir 260 gallons per hour. The formation from London to Blackpool took 41 minutes, which means astir 178 gallons, oregon 805 litres, of substance was consumed.

Based connected the government's fuel-to-emissions speech rates, the formation would person produced astir 2 tonnes of CO2.

Falcon jets typically person 12 seats. So if we presume the level was afloat for the Blackpool trip, 2 tonnes of CO2 would beryllium 166 kg per person.

To enactment that into context, the International Energy Agency estimated that the planetary mean energy-related c footprint was astir 4.7 tonnes of CO2 per idiosyncratic successful 2021.

In opposition to Mr Sunak's flight, a bid travel from London Euston to Blackpool North would nutrient 14.31kg of CO2 per passenger, according to a LNER c calculator..

The Trainline website says it takes an mean of 3 hours and 43 minutes to question from London Euston to Blackpool by train.

Additional reporting by Mark Poynting, BBC clime researcher