On April 17, 2025, the Fox News website published an article, titled, "WATCH: 'Champagne socialists' Sanders and AOC spotted exiting private jet on 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour."
The article shared a video of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) deplaning from a private flight in Sacramento, California. The video was reposted by major right-wing users like Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson, among others.
The story was also picked up by several outlets with known conservative biases, including the New York Post, the Daily Mail and the Washington Times. All articles and social media posts aimed to paint the duo, known for their left-leaning political stances, as hypocrites for taking a private jet as transport. Several alleged that the flight happened on Earth Day, April 22, 2025.
Snopes readers searched the website in an attempt to figure out if the video was real. It was real, although the charter flight did not happen on Earth Day but on April 15. Additionally, their use of the private plane deserves more context than conservative media was willing to give the two congresspeople. Snopes contacted both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez's campaigns but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
The 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour
Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Sanders has become one of the public faces against him, putting on rallies across the country and selling out large arenas, even in historically Republican areas (12,000+ in Boise, Idaho, which Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2024, for instance). Ocasio-Cortez has accompanied Sanders at many of the rallies.
Here's what the tour schedule looked like on the days surrounding the private plane video, according to Sanders' campaign website:
Saturday, April 12: Los Angeles, California. Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Special Musical Guests Neil Young, Maggie Rogers, Joan Baez and more!
Sunday, April 13: Salt Lake City, Utah. Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Monday, April 14: Nampa, Idaho. Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Tuesday, April 15: Bakersfield, California. Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Tuesday, April 15: Folsom, California. Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Wednesday, April 16: Missoula, Montana. Special Guests Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sara Nelson
Nampa is 20 miles outside of Boise, and Folsom is a suburb of Sacramento, for reference.
The only way to get from Bakersfield to Folsom that fast is by private plane
Based on that schedule, the only way for Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to attend their rallies in both Bakersfield and Folsom was to use a private plane. There were no direct flights between the two cities, and most routings on Google Flights estimated the trip would take at least five hours between flying and layovers.
Google Maps said that driving between the two cities would also take about five hours. Assuming that the Folsom rally started late at night, the two would have needed to be on the road from Bakersfield around 4 p.m. afternoon, at the earliest.
Since the rallies were held on a Tuesday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. employees in their intended audience, working Americans, would not be able to go to the Bakersfield rally without missing work. So, a private plane was the only option.
Flight-tracking software found the plane used for the flight
Looking through publicly available flight logs for departures from the Bakersfield airport, we found the plane, a Canadair Challenger 604 operated by Ventura Air Services, that made the trip to Sacramento. The flight history showed that the aircraft previously carried the two congresspeople between Salt Lake City and Boise and between Boise and Bakersfield. (A separate charter plane took the two from Sacramento to Missoula, then appears to have dropped Sanders off in Burlington, Vermont, and Ocasio-Cortez off in Washington, D.C.)
Thus, between the footage and the flight tracking, it is true that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez chartered a private plane during the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez did not own the plane — it was a charter
The Daily Mail's headline improperly implied that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez owned the plane used and that it cost around $7 million. This is false — it was a charter flight, meaning the two did not own the plane.
Fox News, the Washington Times and the New York Post alleged that the plane cost about $15,000 per hour to charter. Snopes contacted Ventura Air Services, the charter company, about its own rate for the plane Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez used. A representative for the company told us he would not provide a quote on charter rates to the media, directed us to the company's CEO for comment, then hung up the phone.
But based on other sources, the $15,000 figured seemed a bit high — several charter plane websites suggested a rate of around $7,500 to $10,000 per hour.
Fox News reported that in the first quarter of 2025, Sanders' PAC, Friends of Bernie Sanders, had spent $221,000 on private charter flights across the first three months of 2025. This was accurate.