Apparently, we are supposed to be shocked that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex flew back to Britain aboard a private Bombardier jet. I am struggling to understand why.
Did anyone seriously expect Harry and Meghan to queue at LAX, remove their shoes at security, wander through Duty Free and spend ten hours in 3A and 3B hoping nobody photographed them while they slept? And then drag two children, two dogs, luggage and a security team through a commercial airport after an overnight transatlantic flight?
Of course they flew private!
What the hell is wrong with you all?
And contrary to the suggestion that arriving aboard a private aircraft amounted to some sort of extravagant “f you” to Britain, I think it said something considerably more interesting about their return.
Harry and Meghan did not come back pretending that the last six years never happened. They came back as the people they have become. And whether they intended to make the point or not, their arrival seemed to say: look at what can change in six short years.
These two people live very differently today from the way they did when they took that famous Freedom Flight.
The aircraft reportedly carrying the Sussex family to Birmingham was a Bombardier Global Express XRS operated by California-based Planet Nine Private Air. This is not a little puddle-jumper with nicer sandwiches. The Global XRS is an ultra-long-range aircraft designed specifically for intercontinental travel.
Planet Nine lists the aircraft as capable of carrying 13 passengers, sleeping six, remaining airborne for up to 12 hours and carrying between 12 and 15 medium-sized cases. There are two lavatories, worldwide Wi-Fi and a proper cabin in which passengers can actually move around during a long flight.
In other words, it is almost comically well suited to the journey Harry and Meghan were making.
Because this wasn’t simply a glamorous couple jetting off to Europe for a romantic weekend. This was a family move.
Harry and Meghan reportedly travelled with seven-year-old Archie and five-year-old Lilibet. Their dogs, Pula and Mia, have also reportedly made the move to Britain. Add the luggage required for an extended stay, the necessities that accompany two young children and the security considerations surrounding one of the most photographed families on Earth, and suddenly a private aircraft begins to look less like an airborne middle finger and more like an extraordinarily efficient means of transportation.
Was it expensive?
Hell yes.
Reports have put the cost of chartering the aircraft for the journey at somewhere around $120,000.
That is an insane amount of money to most of us. I am not going to insult anybody’s intelligence by pretending otherwise. But Harry and Meghan are not most of us.
And that is where some of the commentary surrounding their return becomes rather peculiar.
We seem perfectly capable of understanding that billionaires, movie stars, CEOs, professional athletes and touring musicians use private aviation because their lives require a level of privacy, flexibility and logistical control that ordinary commercial travel does not provide. Members of the Royal Family including King Charles, Prince William and Kate Middleton the Princess of Wales, also routinely use non-commercial aviation, including chartered aircraft and helicopters, when their schedules and security requirements call for it.
Yet when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do precisely the same thing, their aircraft is suddenly imbued with political meaning—or presented as evidence of environmental hypocrisy.
The environmental impact of private aviation is a legitimate subject for debate. But it is not as if that’s the only way to impact the environment. Everyone on Earth has a carbon footprint. Environmental impact is not something peculiar to people who own or charter jets. Harry and Meghan are not the only ones consuming energy. Modern life itself consumes energy and resources.
For an ordinary household, major sources include:
Driving: Petrol and diesel cars produce CO₂; larger/heavier vehicles generally require more energy. Even EVs have manufacturing and electricity-generation impacts, although their lifetime emissions are generally lower.
Flying commercial: Holidays, business trips and visiting family by air all contribute. Someone taking several long-haul flights a year can have a substantial aviation footprint without ever setting foot on a private jet.
Heating and cooling homes: Gas boilers, air-conditioning and electricity use can be major contributors, particularly depending on how the electricity is generated.
Food: Beef and lamb in particular have relatively high greenhouse-gas footprints.
Dairy, food transportation, refrigeration and food waste matter too.
Fast fashion: Producing clothes requires energy, water, chemicals and transportation.
Buying large quantities of inexpensive clothing and discarding it quickly adds considerably to waste and emissions.
Online shopping and delivery: Manufacturing, packaging, warehouses, transportation, returns and last-mile delivery all consume resources.
Electronics: Phones, laptops and televisions require mining, manufacturing and global transportation. Replacing perfectly functional devices frequently increases the footprint.
Streaming, cloud computing and AI: Data centres consume significant electricity and water. Every individual interaction is relatively small, but billions of interactions and hours of streaming add up.
Home consumption: Furniture, renovations, appliances, garden equipment, swimming pools and simply heating or cooling a very large house all require resources.
Waste: Throwing away food, clothing, electronics and household goods means both the waste itself and the resources used to manufacture the discarded products matter.
So there is that. But that is an entirely different argument from claiming that Harry and Meghan’s choice of aircraft amounted to some sort of deliberate insult to Britain.
Why should it?
Harry and Meghan are no longer working royals. They do not receive a Sovereign Grant to perform royal duties. Their lifestyle is their own responsibility. If they can afford to charter an aircraft—or otherwise arrange private transportation—then surely the relevant question is not whether the rest of us would spend $120,000 getting to Birmingham.
I certainly wouldn’t and couldn’t because I can’t afford it. But you can bet your bottom dollar that I would if I could.
The question is whether private travel made sense for the travelers and whether they could afford it. In Harry and Meghan’s circumstances, I would argue that it plainly did.
There is also something rather delicious about interpreting the private jet as an “f you” to Britain. If Harry and Meghan truly wanted to give Britain the finger, there was a considerably cheaper and easier way of doing it.
They could have stayed in Montecito.
Indeed, if you desperately need to locate an “f you” somewhere in the Sussex story, their departure for Montecito probably offers considerably richer material than their return to Birmingham six years later.
No, instead, the Duke and Duchess packed up their children, brought their dogs, crossed more than 5,000 miles of ocean and returned to the country Harry was born in and the country that forms half of their children’s heritage.
Archie and Lilibet are reportedly entering British schools. The family is expected to spend an extended period here. Harry will be closer to his father, to the work surrounding the Invictus Games in Birmingham and to his other charitable interests. Meghan will continue running her businesses and pursuing her own projects.
That doesn’t look like a rejection of Britain to me.
It looks like an embrace of Britain on their own terms.
And perhaps that is what is really unsettling to some people.
There was once an assumption that if Harry and Meghan ever returned, their arrival would somehow represent capitulation. They would come back chastened. Perhaps they would discover that life outside the royal institution was impossible after all. Perhaps Britain would watch the prodigal Sussexes creep back through the gates.
Instead, a Bombardier touched down in Birmingham.
And, oh boy, that aircraft inadvertently told a completely different story.
Harry and Meghan left Britain in 2020 as two enormously famous people attempting to disentangle their private lives, financial futures and identities from the institution of monarchy.
Six years later, they returned as an independently financed Duke and Duchess of Sussex with businesses, charitable interests, homes, employees, security arrangements and two children whose lives now stretch across two countries.
They didn’t return as working royals.
They didn’t return asking Britain to recreate the life they walked away from.
And they didn’t need to pretend to be ordinary in order to demonstrate affection for Harry’s home country.
That’s an important distinction.
You can love Britain and still love California.
You can send your children to British schools and still maintain an American home.
You can reconcile with family without surrendering your independence.
And yes, apparently, you can arrive in Birmingham aboard a Bombardier Global Express XRS without it constituting a declaration of war against the British people.
Sometimes a private jet is just a private jet.
And sometimes it carries a family home.