A Disney heiress who has donated $70 million over the past 30 years says she would outlaw private jets if she could

Hillary Hoffower

Apr 2, 2019, 02:26 IST

A Disney heiress who has donated $70 million over the past 30 years says she would outlaw private jets if she could

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Heiress Abigail Disney would outlaw private jets if she could.

Private jets allow rich people to "get around a certain reality," Disney heiress Abigail Disney told The Cut.
Disney said that though her family has a 737 private jet, she decided to stop using it once she considered her carbon footprint and the cost her trips incurred.
Private jets are popular purchases among many millionaires and billionaires looking for quick and easy travel.

Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos, and other billionaires may own private jets, but heiress Abigail Disney has a different set of thoughts on the topic.

"If I were queen of the world, I would pass a law against private jets, because they enable you to get around a certain reality," Abigail Disney recently told The Cut. "You don't have to go through an airport terminal, you don't have to interact, you don't have to be patient, you don't have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we're human."

Granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, cofounder of The Walt Disney Company, Abigail is an heiress to the Disney fortune. While she stayed mum on the exact size of her inheritance, she told The Cut that she could be a billionaire if she wanted and that she's donated more than $70 million since turning 21.

Her dad's plane was a 737 with a queen-sized bed and a shower, she said: "We would use the plane occasionally because I have four kids, so it was much easier, obviously, to ride on my dad's plane with them. Then, at a certain point, I just said, 'No, I think this is really bad for everybody.'"

That defining moment, she told The Cut, came after thinking about her carbon footprint and the cost of her trip while riding on the jet alone for a quick trip from New York to California.

Owning a private jet is typically a hallmark among millionaires and billionaires, especially high-powered executives and investors working in the tech industry. For them, a private jet can allow for quick and easy travel if they need to be on the other coast the same day, according to Business Insider's Paige Leskin.

Even the notoriously frugal Warren Buffett has his own private jet. As he once told CNBC, it's "the only thing that I do that costs a lot of money."

But design trends in planes are evolving: Business Insider's Katie Warren previously reported that the super-wealthy no longer want their private jets to look like private jets. Instead, they want them to look like extensions of their homes or offices, and are designing them in clean lines and cool color tones.