When Private Jets Ferry Billionaires to Small-Town Idaho

Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, flies in a Gulfstream G650. So do Jeff Bezos and Dan Schulman, PayPal’s CEO. The jets, roughly 470 of which are in operation, retail for about $75 million each.

Most days, those planes are spread out, ferrying captains of industry to meetings around the globe. But for one week in July, some of them converge on a single 100-foot-wide asphalt runway beside the jagged hills of Idaho’s Wood River Valley.

The occasion is the annual Sun Valley conference, a shoulder-rubbing bonanza organized by the secretive investment bank Allen & Co. Known as “summer camp for billionaires,” the conference kicks off this year on Tuesday, and it draws industry titans and their families — some of whom are watched over by local babysitters bound by nondisclosure agreements. In between organized hikes and fly-fishing at past gatherings, there have been sessions on creativity, climate change and immigration reform.

For decades at these secluded gatherings, CEOs and board chairmen have made deals that have shaped the TV we watch, the news we consume and the products we buy. It is where, near the ninth hole of the golf course, the head of General Electric expressed interest in selling NBC to Comcast. It is where Bezos met with the owner of The Washington Post before agreeing to buy the paper, and where Disney pursued a plan to purchase ABC — with Warren Buffett at the center of the discussions.

It is also the biggest week of the year for Chris Pomeroy, the director of Friedman Memorial Airport and the man responsible for making sure all the moguls come and go smoothly.

In the months before the conference starts, Pomeroy prepares to play a high-stakes, 3D game of Tetris with multimillion-dollar private jets as attendees travel to Sun Valley, a resort town with a year-round population of 1,800.

By NC ScoutPublished On: July 4, 2022Categories: Uncategorized4 Comments

About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

4 Comments

david July 4, 2022 at 10:12

I realize that, at best, it would only be needling the bastards, but I’d sure like to see our worthless Congress or FAA make it impossible for our oligarchs to flit around in their private jets. If they can’t make them illegal, make the landing fee $1B per flight.

I don’t want to hear one more peep from these sanctimonious creeps about anybody’d “carbon footprint” until they have to live by the same rules. Greyhound for us, Greyhound for them.
dshimm July 4, 2022 at 10:57

And another thing.
Although I’m sure they’re guarded as well as Ft. Knox, isn’t it interesting that Earth First eco-terrorists and their fellow travelers so fond of “monkey wrenching” whatever their shriveled little minds think is affecting the climate (cf the recent spate of SUV tire flattenings in NYC), haven’t made so much as a PEEP about monkey wrenching the oligarchs’ gas guzzling private jets.
That’s certainly a dog that didn’t bark, isn’t it.
Because the oligarchs and the warmist cult are on the SAME TEAM.
- NC Scout July 4, 2022 at 11:03
  
  Yup.
Oughtsix July 4, 2022 at 18:49

Oh for a pocket nuke or two…. Sun Valley and Davos. Shame bout the beautiful surroundings.

Why can’t they meet in NY and LA?