Two climate activists from the Just Stop Oil group were arrested after covering private jets in orange paint in a Taylor Swift-inspired stunt.
A video posted on X on Thursday showed the two activists breaking into a private airfield at London’s Stansted Airport — where they claimed Swift’s jet was parked — before spraying two jets with paint.
However, a representative for Stansted Airport told Business Insider that Swift’s jet wasn’t at the airport when the incident occurred.
It’s possible that Swift’s aircraft originally landed at the airport before being moved. According to flight tracking data cited by The Independent, Swift’s Falcon 7x landed at Stansted at around 11 p.m. on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Essex Police told BI that a 22-year-old from Brighton, England, and a 25-year-old from Dumbarton, Scotland, had been arrested “on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with the use or operation of national infrastructure.”
They were detained shortly after 5:10 a.m. on Thursday morning, the statement added.
“We are not anti-protest but we will always take action where criminal acts take place,” Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said in a statement obtained by BI.
The protesters belonged to Just Stop Oil, a climate campaign group that has defaced famous artwork and landmarks, which most recently included spraying Stonehenge with orange paint.
A representative for Just Stop Oil confirmed to BI that the planes doused in paint did not belong to Swift.
They said the protest was “generally targeted at private planes,” though the two people involved likely believed Swift’s aircraft was at the airport.
The representative said the group singled out Swift’s aircraft in its social media post because it is “the most emitting” of all celebrity private jets and because they believed that Stansted is where she usually keeps her private jet while in London.
BI previously reported that the singer spent more than 166 hours traveling in private jets between March and August of 2023 for the first leg of her widely popular Eras Tour.
However, according to a study by My Climate Tracker, cited by The Tab, Travis Scott was the celebrity with the most private jet use in 2023. The rapper took 137 flights, resulting in 6,061,300 kg of CO2 emissions, according to The Tab.
Meanwhile, Swift wasn’t among the top 30 celebrities with the most private jet use in 2023, the outlet said.
That’s a stark contrast to 2022.
According to Yard, a UK-based sustainability marketing firm, Swift produced the most CO2 emissions of all celebrities in 2022, with 170 flights and an average flight time of 80 minutes.
A spokesperson for Swift previously told BI that her jet is “loaned out regularly to other individuals” and to attribute most of the trips to the singer alone is “blatantly incorrect.”
The singer’s spokesperson also previously said she had purchased carbon credits to offset her jet use.
Swift is in London for the UK leg of the Eras Tour. She is expected to perform three sold-out shows at Wembley before returning in August for additional shows.
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