The American senator Bernie Sanders and the American representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used a private plane to travel between Bakersfield and Sacramento, California, during his “Tour of Oligarchy of Struggle.”
Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez have private airplanes: they rented flights in a private jet. There were no commercial flights between Bakersfield and Sacramento, California, where the two made two separate demonstrations the same day. Driving that distance would have taken about five hours, which means that logistics would have been impossible to drive without taking a charter flight.
On April 17, 2025, the Fox News website published an article, entitled “Mira: ‘Socialists of Champagne’ Sanders and AOC saw the private jet on the ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour.
The article shared a video of the American senator Bernie Sanders de Vermont and the American representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of a private flight in Sacramento, California. The video was replaced by the main right -wing users such as Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson, among others.
The story was also collected by several points of sale with known conservative prejudices, including The New York Post, The Daily Mail and The Washington Times. All articles and publications on social networks aimed to paint the duo, known for their left -wing political positions, as hypocrites to take a private plane as transportation. Several alleged that the flight occurred on Earth Day, on April 22, 2025.
Snopes readers recorded the website in an attempt to find out if the video was real. It was real, although the Charter flight did not happen on Earth Day, but on April 15. In addition, its use of the private plane deserves more context that the conservative media were willing to give the two congressmen. Snopes contacted Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez campaigns, but had not had news at the time of publication.
The tour of ‘Lucha oligarchy’
Since the president of the United States, Donald Trump, assumed the position in January 2025, Sanders has become one of the public faces against him, organizing demonstrations throughout the country and selling large areas, even in historically republican areas (more than 12,000 in Boise, Idaho, which Trump won for 10 percentage points in 2024, for example). Ocasio-Cortez has accompanied Sanders in many of the demonstrations.
This is how the tour schedule was seen on the days surrounding the video of the private plane, according to the 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: Missa, Montana. Special guests Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sara Nelson
Nampa is 20 miles outside Boise, and Folsom is a Sacramento suburb, as a reference.
The only way to get from Bakersfield to Folsom that is fast by private plane
According to that schedule, the only way for Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to attend their manifestations in Bakersfield and Folsom was to use a private plane. There were no direct flights between the two cities, and most of the routes on Google flights estimated that the trip would take at least five hours between the flight and the scales.
Google Maps said driving between the two cities would also take about five hours. Assuming that Folsom’s rally began late at night, the two would have needed to be on the road from Bakersfield around 4 pm in the afternoon, as soon as possible.
Since the demonstrations were held on a Tuesday from 9 am to 5 pm, the employees at their scheduled audience, the Americans who work, could not go to the Bakersfield rally without lack of work. So, a private plane was the only option.
The flight track software found the plane used for flight
Looking through flight records publicly available for departures from the Bakersfield airport, we find the plane, a 604 Canadair Challenger operated by Ventura Air Services, which made the trip to Sacramento. The history of the flight showed that the plane previously led the two congressmen between Salt Lake City and Boise and between Boise and Bakersfield. (A separate charter plane led both of Sacramento to Missoula, then it seems to have left Sanders in Burlington, Vermont and Ocasio-Cortez in Washington, DC)
Therefore, between the footage and the monitoring of the flight, it is true that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rent a private plane during the “combat oligarchy” tour.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were not owners of the plane, it was a letter
The head of the Daily Mail implied incorrectly that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez would owe the plane he used and cost around $ 7 million. This is false: it was a charter flight, which means that 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 the letter. Snopes contacted Ventura Air Services, the Charter company, on its own rate for the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez plane used. A company representative told us that he would not provide a price on the letter rates to the media, addressed the company’s CEO to comment and then hang the phone.
But based on other sources, the $ 15,000 designed seemed a bit high: several Charter aircraft 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 in the first three months of 2025. This was accurate.
