The Daily Mail must have paid a small fortune for the exclusive, blurry photos of the Duchess of Sussex exiting a private plane at the Santa Barbara Airport, because the Mail is still trying to gin up some outrage about it. Meghan and Harry reportedly took a private plane to Vancouver, and Meghan left Canada on Tuesday so she could return home to her kids. Per usual, the Daily Mail only cares about plane and helicopter usage when it involves Harry and Meghan. They couldn’t care less when Prince William and Kate use British-taxpayer-funded helicopters as taxis. William has a whole-ass environmental busywork scheme, yet he’s never given a headline like “ECO-WARRIOR FRAUD Prince William takes royal helicopter to Birmingham!” And yet, this is the Mail’s headline: “Meghan Markle’s ‘$30,000 private jet trip’: Eco-preaching duchess flew back to California from Invictus Games on gas-guzzling plane that created six-tonnes of CO2 – and included mystery stopover in Seattle.” Has Meghan ever positioned herself as an environmentalist? Has she ever “eco-preached”? William has definitely “eco-preached.”

Meghan Markle’s private jet trip back from the Invictus Games in Canada could have cost up to $30,000 and created six tonnes of CO2 on the three-hour flight that included a mystery stopover in the US, MailOnline can reveal today. The Duchess of Sussex, 43, has jetted back home to California from Vancouver – without her husband Harry – and the couple are believed to have used the same $9million plane to fly up last week.

The average cost of hiring a jet of that size is between $7,000 to $10,000 per hour meaning that the former Suits star’s flight home could have cost between $21,000 and $30,000.

Meghan and Harry have previously won green awards and were even named environmental ‘role models’ in 2021. But Meghan’s flight will have burned around 800 gallons of fuel and created around 6.6 tonnes of CO2, which weighs the same as a large elephant.

Meghan landed at Santa Barbara Airport at 5.01pm on Tuesday after supporting her husband in Canada at Invictus’ first winter games.

But MailOnline can reveal that the flight logs for the Bombardier CL-600 luxury jet show that it stopped in Seattle for around 30 minutes before taking off again for its final destination. She took off from Vancouver at 2.06pm local time on February 11 and landed over the border in Seattle at 2.40pm. The private jet took off again at 3.14pm and landed in Santa Barbara almost two hours later. The Bombardier CL-600, which can carry up to ten passengers and has a range of over 5,000 miles, includes its own a private crew serving hot meals and drinks.

It also has a large hold for bags and other items, exemplified by the amount of luggage taken out when the Duchess of Sussex landed in California on Tuesday.

MailOnline has asked a spokesman for the Duchess why she used a private plane rather than a commercial flight and the reason for the pitstop in Seattle.

[From The Daily Mail]

Great, now do William and Kate. How did Kate get to the Alps for her post-Christmas ski holiday? Why did William cancel his Army Air Corps event last month, and was it because they wouldn’t let him pull a stunt with one of their expensive machines? Why did King Charles make William sign a waiver because of the Waleses’ excessive helicopter usage? It continues to blow my mind that the Mail is truly trawling through FAA records to track the Sussexes’ private plane usage and they have absolutely no smoke for the left-behind royals’ travel arrangements. And even then, notice how the Mail hasn’t found the ownership of the plane – it’s more than likely that the Sussexes just rented it for these flights, or perhaps one of their wealthy friends let them hitch a ride. Perhaps a Seattle-based friend?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.