Where do the worlds of pop-superstardom and international espionage meet? Aboard a $40 million private jet at 41,000 feet, of course.
The jet WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange paid $500,000 to fly him from London to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands on Monday is none other than the same plane Taylor Swift chartered when she famously rushed from a Japan concert to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce win the Super Bowl in Las Vegas back in February, flight logs show.
Assange, 52, and Swift, 34, both hired the 2017 Bombardier Global 6000 executive jet with the tail number 9H-VTD from the flight company VistaJet, according to photos from their respective journeys.
Assange onboard the VistaJet plane as he travelled from London to Saipan on Monday to appear for a plea deal.ZUMAPRESS.com
The luxury aircraft can carry 14 passengers and sleep seven, with cabin lounge chairs converting into comfortable beds.
Th jet, which sells for up to $40 million, can fly for 13 hours over a range of 6,000 nautical miles, according to VistaJet’s website.
The plane has a roomy cabin with headspace of six-foot, two-inches — ample room for the 5’11” Swift.
Taylor Swift appeared to take the same jet to fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles for the Super Bowl in February.AFP via Getty Images
Flight records for the jet also line up with the itineraries from each of their flights.
Records from February 10 show the jet flying from Tokyo to Los Angeles — as Swift did.
Entries from Monday and Tuesday show the plane flying from London to Saipan with a stopover in Bangkok on the same itinerary Assange followed.
Both flights were followed closely by journalists and supporters across the world, though for starkly different reasons.
Assange took to the skies Monday as part of a plea deal with the US that’s freed him from London prison for the first time in five years.
VistaJet 9H-VTD, which is believed to have carried both Taylor Swift and Julian Assange on separate flights.AP
He was expected to plead guilty Wednesday morning local time to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information related to WikiLeak’s 2010 release of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic files.
The plane first landed in Bangkok, Thailand for refueling.
He landed in Saipan on Wednesday morning local time, flight records show, touching down in American territory nearly 6,000 miles from California after he reportedly refused to set foot on the US mainland.
He was due in federal court on the remote island Wednesday.
Julian Assange steps off the VistaJet plane in Saipan on Tuesday. He is due in federal court on WednesdayWikiLeaks/AFP via Getty Images
Swift’s needs for jet 9H-VTD were vastly different.
After playing a show for thousands of screaming fans in Tokyo, some fretted about whether she’d be able to make it across the world to watch Kelce play in the Super Bowl the very next day.
Swift rushed to the Haneda airport after wrapping up the show and proceeded to fly across nine time zones and the international date line to make it to Los Angeles with time to spare for the Las Vegas showdown.
