Celebrities, royalty, and billionaires arrived on their private jets in Venice, Italy, ahead of the celebrations for Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s wedding.
As of Friday morning, dozens of jets — owned by celebrities like Kim Kardashian, business titans like Bill Gates, and even the Queen of Jordan — had landed at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport.
The biggest influx came on Thursday ahead of the expected start of festivities in the floating city over the weekend.
Kardashian’s Gulfstream G650 touched down on Thursday morning, according to flight-tracking data from ADS-B Exchange. The G650, which costs about $65 million, departed Los Angeles 10 hours earlier.
Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner were also photographed with her in Venice, boarding a water taxi, before they met Orlando Bloom and the fashion designer Domenico Dolce.
Kardashian attended Sánchez’s bachelorette party in Paris last month, which included a boat ride down the Seine.
Kylie Jenner’s Bombardier Global 7500 arrived from Budapest around 3:30 p.m. local time Thursday, before she was pictured in the floating city with her sister Kendall Jenner.
About an hour later, it was followed by Bill Gates’ G650, which came from Brussels.
Earlier in the day, Oprah Winfrey’s G700 also landed in Venice, per ADS-B Exchange. Business Insider’s reporter in Venice saw Winfrey and the broadcaster Gayle King boarding a boat by the airport.
The NFL legend Tom Brady was also pictured at the dock around noon, shortly after a charter jet arrived from Miami, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Gulfstream G650 landed about 1:30 p.m. local time.
Another G650, which JetSpy says is owned by James Murdoch, the son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, landed in Venice on Thursday, too. So did another jet belonging to hedge fund billionaire John Griffin. Plus, Queen Rania of Jordan arrived on a government G650.
Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel and his wife, fashion designer Sarah Staudinger, were also photographed arriving. They appear to have traveled on a Global 6000 owned by Endeavor Group Holdings, of which Emanuel is CEO.
Endeavor’s executive chairman, Patrick Whitesell, is Sánchez’s ex-husband.
Around 6 p.m., a corporate Netflix jet arrived from California. Shortly after midnight, a jet owned by the Tudor Investment Corporation, the firm run by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, landed.
Early Friday morning saw the arrival of a jet owned by the record executive David Geffen.
Bezos, who is one of the world’s richest people and is worth just over $230 billion, owns three planes, according to JetSpy. Two aircraft — the G700 and a G650 — have been hopping around the Mediterranean in recent days. They were both parked across the Adriatic Sea in Dubrovnik on Thursday.
Bezos and Sánchez kicked off their pre-wedding celebrations on Tuesday with a foam party on his $500 million superyacht, Koru, parked just off the Croatian coast.
Tuesday also saw the first pictures of guests at the Venice airport, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s G500 landed about midday, and she was photographed at the water taxi dock.
A Bombardier Global 7500 owned by her husband, the Fox cofounder Barry Diller, arrived in Venice at about noon on Wednesday, per ADS-B Exchange data.
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Rising activity
“Jeff Bezos’ wedding this week in Venice is likely to draw an influx of bizjets to nearby airports,” said WingX, an aviation data firm.
It added that business-jet activity had already “risen significantly,” with 33 arrivals into Venice and nearby Treviso on Sunday, almost double from a week earlier.
Data from Flightradar24, which doesn’t display most private-jet arrivals for privacy reasons, showed five large business jets were scheduled to land on Thursday. That’s compared with two on Wednesday, one on Tuesday, and none on Monday.
The Guardian reported that more than 90 private jets are expected to land in Venice before the celebrations begin.
