FIFA chief's jet flies enough to circles equator twice
Bloomberg Live Events Scattered Boos Bloomberg as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Addas a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now
Bloomberg Live Events Scattered Boos Bloomberg as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Addas a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel This year’s World Cup features an unprecedented 104 matches after FIFA expanded the competition to include 48 teams. By the tournament’s end, Gianni Infantino will have attended nearly half of them.To do so, the FIFA president has flown about 57,700 miles between the three host countries — Canada, Mexico and the US — on a luxury Gulfstream G650ER operated by Qatar Airways that FIFA pays to use, according to a Bloomberg calculation of the shortest distance between airports based on numbers from JetSpy, an aviation data provider.That’s equivalent to taking 23 flights between Los Angeles and New York, or lapping Earth’s equator twice.Suited and surrounded by football officials, Infantino has been such a ubiquitous sight at this year’s tournament that one online joke claiming he was present at two simultaneous games went viral. Infantino didn’t bend the rules of space and time to attend two games at once, but he did attend two games played on the same day in different cities — sometimes in different countries — on 13 occasions.His attendance is especially notable due to the unprecedented scope of this year’s tournament.
In 2022, Infantino made a point of attending all 64 matches held in Qatar — a country smaller than Connecticut. Not only does this year’s tournament have 40 more matches, but it’s also the first in FIFA’s century-long history to be hosted by three countries.FIFA will consider stretching the next tournament even further to include 64 teams, Infantino told Swiss broadcaster Blue Sport. The 2030 World Cup will be co-hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain.Infantino’s longest travel day was June 26, when his jet flew more than 5,500 miles. After watching Ivory Coast defeat Curaçao in Philadelphia the evening before and spending the night in Miami, he flew to Dallas, where he briefly visited Jordan’s team. An hour and a half later, he jetted off to Seattle to catch the match between Egypt and Iran. After the game, he flew back to Miami for the night, where he watched Colombia and Portugal the next day.The 56-year-old FIFA president will have watched six games in Miami — more than any other location — following Saturday’s third-place match between France and England. He relocated to the South Florida city two years ago ahead of the tournament.A FIFA spokesperson declined to comment on Infantino’s World Cup itinerary.The World Cup caused a spike in demand for private jet charters this summer as wealthy soccer enthusiasts built multi-city travel itineraries, said Barry Shevlin, chief executive officer of private aviation company FlyUSA.
The BriefWire