(The Center Square) -- U.S. senators collectively spend more than a million taxpayer dollars each year for pricey flights on private planes for themselves and their staff, even though Senate rules greatly discourage the practice, an investigation by The Center Square found.
The spending includes a Midwestern senator who regularly charters flights to travel to and from Washington, D.C., at an expense that is about 10 times what he would pay to fly commercially from his local airport.
It also includes New York's two senators who have repeatedly used the charter planes to crisscross their state for public appearances and press conferences, including for initiatives to protect the environment. Private jets are notorious polluters and often criticized by environmentalists when celebrities use them.
And one former Arizona senator spent about $50,000 for one flight from Washington, D.C., to the Grand Canyon in 2023 to attend an event with then-President Joe Biden, who signed a proclamation to protect sacred tribal land in the area.
"It shows that when you're spending somebody else's money, you aren't looking for the best deal," said David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a national government spending hawk. "There's got to be better guidelines, better regulations and better oversight to make sure that they're not spending thousands of dollars on a round-trip flight that could cost hundreds of dollars."
Senate rules allow for reimbursement for charter aircraft with no more than two engines and six seats under certain circumstances. Those situations include: flights that exceed 14 hours; the transportation of someone with a medical disability; security concerns; no other available flights; and "other exceptional circumstances."
A representative of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics -- which oversees the spending -- did not respond to a request to comment on the rules and the flights of senators.
The senators' spending is reported twice each year by the Secretary of the Senate, but it is published in a way that makes it difficult for the general public to evaluate. The text documents are thousands of pages long and cannot be easily transferred to spreadsheets for analysis. The U.S. House provides the information in spreadsheet form.
The Center Square used artificial intelligence tools to extract the data and manually verified the key information that is the basis of this article.
Senate spending for charter flights has far outpaced that of the U.S. House, where the top spender averaged about $10,000 per year. The Senate spending has been driven primarily by three people.
The top spender
Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, spends by far the most on charter flights. In 2024, the most-recent full calendar year available in the Senate expense reports, he spent about $480,000.
That was nearly half of the total spent by all senators.
Senators who live in sparsely populated and geographically large states often opt for private planes for some of their travel to visit far-flung constituents, but Rounds' spending is mostly for travel to Washington, D.C., the Senate's records show.
He often spends between $10,000 and $15,000 each week for the travel. On Mondays he typically flies from his city of Pierre -- in the middle of South Dakota -- on a charter plane to a suburb of Minneapolis, where he switches to a typical commercial flight to Washington. Later in the week, he returns by a similar combination of commercial and charter flights.
Each charter flight to the Minneapolis area costs about $6,000. Roundtrip commercial flights from Pierre to Washington, D.C. often cost between $500 and $1,000.
There are no direct commercial flights to Washington from Pierre, which despite being the state's capital has a population of about 14,000. Yet some of the available commercial flights can take as little as about six hours to reach the nation's capital, The Center Square found through commercial flight booking websites.
Rounds' office did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this article, but a Center Square reporter approached Rounds in Washington and asked about the flights.
"That's the frustrating part," Rounds said, referring to a lack of direct flights to and from Washington to South Dakota. "We've actually tried driving to different places and then getting on a flight, but then you need a connecting flight. This is the best we can do right now and actually make our votes on Mondays and Thursdays."
The total travel time for Rounds' typical trips was not immediately available. He is required to report how much they cost and when they happened, but federal lawmakers have shielded themselves from public records requests that might reveal more information about their travels.
Most of the charter flights Rounds commissions are from Mustang Aviation, a decades-old company that also offers aircraft maintenance and flight training. Its owner, Jim Peitz, did not respond to a request for comment.
Campaign finance disclosures show that Peitz donated $4,000 to Rounds in his last election cycle, which culminated with a dominant win in 2020. Rounds, a former governor, was first elected to the Senate in 2014.
Rounds also told The Center Square, when one of its reporters caught up to him at the Capitol last week, that his office returns more money from his Senate office account than many lawmakers.
"We're normally giving back more money out of our budget than about 50% of all the members of the Senate," Rounds said. "We try to follow up pretty closely so that we're actually sending money back to the sergeant at arms."
But he could not say how much money the office returns.
South Dakota's other senator -- Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from Sioux Falls -- also flies from an out-of-state airport to Washington, Senate records show. Thune flies between Omaha, Neb., and D.C., at a cost that is often less than $1,000. The records do not indicate how he travels to and from Omaha.
Thune's office did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
Thune is also one of the top spenders for charter flights, often spending about $50,000 each year. Records show he uses the flights for in-state travel. His home in Sioux Falls is in the far southeast corner of the state.
New York's senators
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, both New York Democrats, are routinely the second- and third-highest spenders for charter flights, according to the Senate data.
In 2024, Gillibrand spent about $270,000, and Schumer spent about $160,000.
They often use the flights to make multiple stops across their state, usually for public appearances and press conferences. For instance, Schumer's flights last year coincided with events in which he discussed federal health care funding freezes, the impact of tariffs on businesses and efforts he opposed to eliminate clean energy tax credits, according to a review of his schedule.
The final destinations of the Schumer flights were sometimes Washington, D.C.
The senators spent even more money on flights in 2022 -- a mid-term election year that featured a tighter-than-usual governor's race and a strong Republican turnout. That year, Gillibrand spent about $350,000, which approached the amount Rounds spent.
Gillibrand and Schumer's staff did not respond to requests to comment for this article.
Many of the destinations for both senators were larger New York cities with regular commercial flights available for hundreds of dollars. Instead, Schumer commissioned flights that typically cost between $7,000 and $10,000.
Gillibrand's were about twice as expensive per trip, with many of them originating in Washington. The flights ranged in cost from about $15,000 to $19,000.
Gillibrand typically charters flights from Venture Jets, a Pennsylvania-based company. Schumer uses Flying Zebra in New York.
Most expensive flight
Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, was a Top 5 spender for chartered flights in 2022 and 2023. She spent a comparable amount to Gillibrand in 2023, largely because of the most-expensive flight listed in Senate expenditure data in recent years.
Sinema and several members of her staff flew on a charter plane from Washington to the Grand Canyon, which is in her state, in August 2023 at a cost of about $50,000, the data show.
One-way direct flights from Washington to Flagstaff, Ariz., -- near the Grand Canyon -- can cost less than $200 per person, according to current commercial airline ticket prices.
On the day of her flight, she attended an event in which then-President Joe Biden signed a proclamation to protect more than 900,000 acres of land important to native Americans near Grand Canyon National Park. Sinema was a lead advocate of banning future uranium mining in the area.
Senate records indicate Sinema chartered further flights that day and the next to visit several other cities at an additional cost of $19,000. She did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
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