Pastors and Planes – September

Liberty University racks up more than double in flight operating costs than next highest user.

MinistryWatch, in collaboration with the Trinity Foundation, each month publishes a list of the private planes belonging to pastors and Christian ministries.

Photo by Ramon Kagie / Unsplash

The list also includes 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 56 planes owned by more than 40 ministries.
• During September, these planes made a total of 316 flights. That’s the lowest since February when there were 296 flights. There were 401 flights in August and 442 in July.
• Operating costs were approximately $1.16 million for the month — down from August, which was $1.54 million, and June, which was $1.41 million.
• In September, Liberty University took the spot of top user of private aircraft for the seventh time this year, racking up an estimated $202,200 in flight operating costs. That’s more than double the next highest user for the month.
• In second was Assemblies of God with $76,820 in flight operating costs, followed in close succession by Samaritan’s Purse ($75,175), evangelist Edir Macedo’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God ($73,100) and Creflo Dollar’s World Heir ($71,825).

A few other notes from Barry Bowen of the Trinity Foundation:

• Pastor & Planes has begun tracking another jet. Samaritan’s Purse acquired a used Gulfstream GV-SP (G550) jet through its holding company, Emmanuel Group. The jet, identified by tail number N223A, was certified as airworthy in 2018.
• Liberty University received a grant from Boeing. The funds will be used in constructing a pavilion at Lynchburg Regional Airport where Samaritan’s Purse’s former DC-8 will be displayed.
• Kenneth Copeland’s Gulfstream G-V jet, previously owned by actor Tyler Perry, made five flights in September. Tarrant County appraised the jet for $10.3 million. The jet is stored in a hangar at Fort Worth Alliance Airport.
• Copeland’s other aircraft normally departs from Kenneth Copeland Airport, a former military training base, which Copeland’s church acquired to build the Revival Capital of the World. Kenneth Copeland Airport is unable to accommodate the Gulfstream jet. AirNav.com reports the runway is “in poor condition.”

It is important to note that some Christian ministries—especially disaster relief and missionary organizations—have legitimate uses for airplanes, but the planes they’re using are not luxury jets that can go literally around the world at nearly the speed of sound. We have not included these cargo planes on this list.

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 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.
• A takeoff and landing is considered one flight. Half flights usually indicate an overnight flight in which the plane took off at the end of one month and landed on the first day of the next month.
• We can’t be sure who is using these planes, or for what purpose. It’s possible that the ministries are leasing or chartering the flights to others to generate income. However, if that’s the case, the ministry would normally have to declare that income as “unrelated business income.” We can find no evidence that any of these ministries are doing that, though it’s also important to note that most of the ministries on this list do not file Form 990s.

It’s also important to note that this list does not include ministries who use “fractional ownership” services such as NetJets. Neither does this list indicate if the aircraft is for ministry or personal use. Using ministry resources for personal use is not strictly prohibited by IRS regulations, but the use of the aircraft would have to be counted as income. The IRS almost never investigates tax-exempt organizations. Of the nearly 2-million tax-exempt organizations in the country, less than 10,000 get audited each year—that’s one-tenth of 1%.  And the number audited in many years is closer to 5,000.

MinistryWatch considers the use of private aircraft for the transportation of executives and staff to be excessive. It should be a significant red flag for donors. To see other warning signs donors should heed before donating to a ministry, click here.

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