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The air travel frenzy was a key part of Musk's journey to become a global celebrity
Chief Tesla's business jet Elon Musk traveled more than 150,000 km last year, more than six times around the Earth, as he ran between the outposts of his futuristic empire during what he called "the most painful year" of his career, according to flight records obtained by the Washington Post.
Tesla, the automaker that spends billions of dollars in debt and has laid off thousands of employees over the past year, has paid frequent travel for this billionaire leader in a private plane, including cutting 7% its workforce this month.
Musk's jet has logged more than 250 flights for his work, his pet projects and his vacations in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East for a year when he said that his electric car giant was losing up to $ 100 million a week and was teetering on the edge of the abyss. from the collapse.
But Musk's relentless program has been relaxed by a low level of convenience and luxury, but the ultra-rich can afford it. Some of the flights were leisure getaways for Musk or his family, while others consisted of moving the plane from one side of Los Angeles to the other to help Musk shorten his trips.
The frequent trip of the billionaire executive in a private plane was paid by Tesla
The company will be faced with questions about its spending when it publishes its annual results report on Wednesday, and investors will be looking closely whether Tesla will make a profit despite the heavy losses recorded earlier in the year.
The frenzy of air travel was a key part of Musk's journey to become a global celebrity, showing how his attention could suddenly switch between his ambitious projects in California cars, his batteries in Nevada, his tunnels in Chicago and his rockets in Florida.
It offers a glimpse into the wildest superstar of America's most polarizing technology, highlighting the chaos of a year in which he rescued his enemies into idiots and pedophiles, smoked of Grbad at a live interview and was sued by federal authorities accusing him of misleading investors – a move that cost him his presidency on Tesla's board of directors .
But it also reveals an awkward dynamic for one of the most virulent crusaders in terms of renewable energy: in September, a few days after qualifying fossil fuels for "the most stupid experiment in the world." "Human history", his plane had burned thousands of pounds of jet fuel flying 300 miles from Los Angeles to Oakland, California, so that Musk could see a competitive video game event.
"We know we will miss dead dinosaurs in search of fuel and that we will have to use sustainable energy in the future," he tweeted in November, the same day his plane flew over Mexico for a personal trip, according to Tesla. "So, why not use renewable energy now and avoid the growing risks of climate catastrophe?"
Musk was not made available to comment, but a spokesman for Tesla said his heavy plane travel was an indispensable part of the business. "Until we can teleport, there is unfortunately no other solution that would allow him to do his job as efficiently," said spokesman Dave Arnold.
Musk represents more than $ 20 billion, but its companies have paid the bills for fuel, maintenance, crew and others. In a June financial report, Tesla said the Musk Spacek rocket company had flown the plane and sent Tesla a tab worth approximately $ 700,000 in 2017.
The company said Tesla did not cover the costs of Musk's personal travel, but declined to say how it defines what constitutes a personal trip. The company also declined to offer an estimate of Musk's flight costs last year, as data show that the number of jet flights has increased. Tesla added that it also covered the expenses of a second plane belonging to Musk, which was to pay an additional $ 46,000 in 2017.
Although Musk often lamented "soul-destroying" traffic as an inspiration for his commercial interests in high-speed tunnels and autonomous cars, he spoke little about his secret weapon to avoid it: a Gulfstream G650ER 2015 sold about $ 70 million. It's one of the world's fastest and largest ultra-long range business jets; only a few hundred have been made.
The Post obtained the flight data from an industry official, who provided them on an anonymous basis, and confirmed this information through Federal Aviation Freedom of Information Act applications. Administration. The data does not show who was on board during the flights, but aspects of Musk's trip were confirmed by his public appearances, interviews and tweets.
In a difficult year, the private jet financed by the Musk Company has traveled more than 150,000 miles, enough to travel around the globe six times.
Musk is far from being the only company manager to depend on the speed, flexibility and confidentiality of its flights around the world by private plane. His leadership role as CEO, visionary and drummer for many companies partly explains why he relies on him. on her so heavily to move.
But even compared to his peers, Musk's trip stands out. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos – another West Coast technology billionaire, with similar commercial activities and the same type of Gulfstream aircraft – has made 100 fewer flights than Musk's. last year, according to Post's badysis. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.)
Apple, which generated 19 times more revenue than Tesla in 2017, paid Chief Tim Cook about $ 93,000 for his private plane flights – a fraction of the $ 700,000 spent by Tesla that year.
Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, said that Mr. Musk's trips for vacation and ancillary projects on a jet aircraft funded by Tesla were symptomatic of a disturbing management culture, in which public shareholders pay to subsidize the project. life of the "superstar" of their company.
"Can members of the base use the company's airplane for the holidays? Can members of the base use the property of the company for personal use? Of course not. They are Tesla, as much as it is, "said Elson. "This company has real financial problems and (it) spends the money of others."
Musk called 2018 an agonizing year for companies that, he said, oscillated between "life or death". The survival of the society, he said, is due in large part to his herculean workload and his spirit of sacrifice, including sleeping in the Tesla factory and working 120 hours a week. "Despite the difficulty of" his employees, he said at "60 minutes," "I would make the situation worse for me".
But the flight records reveal some shortcomings in Musk's self-badessment of an "atrocious" year. In an interview with the New York Times last summer, Musk said that he had spent his 47th birthday continuously in Tesla's factory all night – not friends, nothing "before going to the wedding of his brother in Spain, saying that he had arrived shortly before the ceremony and that he had left immediately after, you rush to return to work.
The interview, however, did not indicate that Musk had left the ceremony on the Spanish coast and flew to the north of Ireland, where he had visited the film set of the fantasy epic "Game of Thrones" from HBO with her kids and had dinner at a Belfast pub. according to local media reports. Musk tweeted after the trip. This trip took place three weeks after Musk announced that Tesla would lay off some 3,500 employees, or 9 percent of its workforce, as part of a reorganization that he described as "difficult, but necessary."
A Tesla official said that it was the description of the Times, not Musk's, which he had left immediately after, but that Musk had curtailed his participation in the wedding festivities that were to last several days.
The jet is registered in a SpaceX subsidiary called Falcon Landing, named after its reusable rocket, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's records. Musk or his badociates took an additional step, common to corporate executives, to request that the trip not be recorded in the public flight tracking databases.
Much of the flight took off or landed at L.A.'s Van Nuys Airport, a short drive from the unfamiliar Bel Air neighborhood, where Musk owns five mansions. It's been in August that his plane landed there, Musk told the Times. He tweeted that Tesla had obtained the "financing obtained" to remain private – a promise that shook the market and finally fell flat. Musk and Tesla then agreed to pay a $ 40 million settlement and introduce new safeguards to resolve a case of the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that Musk had misled investors about the outlook for the transaction.
Last year, the Musk plane flew to the San Jose airport, the closest airport to Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto and the next one. Fremont's car manufacturing plant in California, where Musk often said that he was so busy that he ended up sleeping among the machines. Dozens of other flights were made to airports near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and the battery company near Reno, Nev.
Tesla said that Musk had never used the plane to get to different places in Los Angeles. But the plane would fly to meet him at a nearby airport if, for example, he started his day at the SpaceX office, south of LA, and the plane was in the north, announced the company. Some of the repositioning flights only traveled about 30 kilometers, according to the aircraft data.
Musk's travels could be a whirlwind of commercial activity, his role quickly pbading from one company to the other. In early June, Musk went to a SpaceX office near Seattle, where he fired a number of senior officials working on a satellite project, company employees told Reuters. The flight records indicate that Musk returned to California shortly thereafter and that, a few days later, he was on a flight to Chicago to plead alongside Mayor Rahm Emanuel in favor of a tunnel system supported by the government, built by the new Musk Tunnel Transit Company, The Boring Company.
The Musk jet skyrocketed as its shareholders were facing increasing pressure from Tesla's shareholders as a result of the company's cash consumption.
But the plane also allowed Musk to avoid airline business trips when he was absent. During the first three months of 2018, a quarter in which pressure from Tesla investors dissipated and where the company spent more than a billion dollars in cash, the aircraft was traveled more than 50,000 kilometers, including for holidays in Chile, a tour of the set for the "Westworld" robotic drama in Texas and a spring break with his children in Jordan and Israel.
In May, a few days after criticizing financial badysts for what he called "boring questions" about Tesla's spending, Musk flew to New York, where he attended the lavish Met Gala with his girlfriend of the time, the electronic musician Grimes.
On Musk's most notorious trip last summer, a few days after his return from his brother's wedding, he flew to Thailand for the delivery of a mini-submarine who, according to him, could help save a team of young footballers trapped in a submerged cave. The ship was not used in the rescue operations, but shortly after her return home, Musk told her tens of millions of followers on Twitter that a rescue volunteer who had criticized the mini- Musk's submarine was a pedophile. This volunteer, Vernon Unsworth, sued Musk in an ongoing lawsuit. Musk's lawyers defended the comments as "spitting" in social media.
The Musk jet skyrocketed as its shareholders were facing increasing pressure from Tesla's shareholders as a result of the company's cash consumption, which had risen to hundreds of millions of dollars per month. In June, when Tesla fired 9% of its workforce, Musk told his employees that they "were making this tough decision now so we do not have to do it again." Earlier this month, Musk again informed workers that the company had "no other choice" than to cut 7% of its full-time staff and many other temporary workers and contractors. "There is no other way," he says.
The cuts have fueled Wall Street's new doubts that Tesla could turn into a profitable automaker, and its stock has dropped more than 20% from its peak of 2017. Musk's problems have spread to more and more people. 39, other parts of his empire: Tesla's last mbadive layoff occurred the same week that SpaceX had announced that it would fire 10% of its employees, claiming that it had to "become a lighter company" .
Musk, however, showed little sign of sticking to a leaner flight itinerary. He ended the year 2018 as he had started, with an international flight: a private business trip to Shanghai.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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