Take a look at the booths at any professional sporting event and you'll likely see dozens or hundreds of hand-drawn signs.
But to support the Toronto Blue Jays' playoff run, one pilot went to extremes — and other fans are calling them out for the unnecessary environmental damage their “draft” is causing.
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An image shared on the subreddit r/TorontoBlueJays shows the flight path of a private plane over Nova Scotia. The pilot steered the plane so that the flight path would create a drawing of the Blue Jays logo during the team's playoff run, a day after Toronto dropped the first two games of the American League Championship Series to the Seattle Mariners.
According to data from FlightAware, the Oct. 14 flight took off from Halifax Stanfield International Airport, flew east to make the Blue Jay pattern and then returned west to land at Debert Airport. The flight took 2 hours, 23 minutes or about two full hours longer than a standard flight from Halifax to Debert.
While the pilot was clearly excited to show off their Blue Jays fandom, and perhaps it brought the Jays some luck since they rallied to beat Seattle in seven games and reach the World Series, that stunt added two more hours of harmful carbon pollution from the private plane.
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One Redditor said: “The fact that someone could do this with an airplane is incredibly talented. And the amount of gas that must have been used was expensive. Rich and talented pilot.”
Pollution from private jets has increased dramatically in recent years. A 2024 study found that private aviation caused at least 17 million tons of carbon pollution in 2023, and that amount was 46% higher than in 2019.
The research shows that short flights of less than 560 kilometers account for almost half of all private aviation. This means that many of those journeys could have been completed in just a few hours and with significantly less CO2 pollution from driving (especially in an electric vehicle).
The Blue Jays flight traveled a total of 354 miles, but a direct trip between those cities is only 37 miles. Multiple Redditors estimate that the extra flying was likely responsible for about 30-35 additional gallons of 100LL fuel, a low-lead aviation gasoline that still contains enough lead to be considered a major source of lead-to-air pollution, as the FAA outlined during the first Trump administration — as more of a real-life version of “chemtrails” — in addition to contributing significant carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
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“Suck up those climate activists!!!!” wrote one Redditor.
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Should the ultra-rich pay a tax to offset their impact on the environment? Absolute Depends on how they are taxed Only companies should pay them No way Click on your choice to see the results and give your opinion. |
Some fans found the “drawing” cute and impressive. But many highlighted the environmental damage it caused, with some calling it 'stupid and wasteful', and one cynically remarking: 'And here I am drinking from a paper straw.'
“It must be nice to have money,” one commenter wrote. “Kill the environment for the likes.”
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