The Irish Air Corps' Dassault Falcon 6X jet flew accused mob boss Daniel Kinahan from Dubai to Ireland last week at an estimated cost of €110,896, according to aviation insiders. The 12,000km round trip brought the 49-year-old home to face justice, and the cost is about half of what the state would have paid to hire a private jet for the same mission.
Flight details and cost breakdown
The jet flew from Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, south Dublin, to Dubai and back, with each leg lasting eight hours, for a total of 16 hours of flight time. The aircraft departed at 10.30am on Saturday and landed back at Baldonnel at 6.30pm on Sunday, 32 hours later. Kinahan was then arrested and brought to the Special Criminal Court in Dublin to face a charge of directing a crime gang, and later remanded to Portlaoise Prison in Co Laois.
Aviation insiders said the total cost per hour of flying the high-tech jet, including fuel and Air Corps crew salaries, is about $8,000 (€6,930). That puts the total return flight cost at €110,896. The cost does not include the expenses of sending a small number of gardai from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau on the flight, nor their accommodation costs for Saturday night, which are believed to be less than €5,000. It also excludes the massive Garda operation involving the Emergency Response Unit and Armed Support Unit that escorted Kinahan from Baldonnel to the court and then to prison, likely costing tens of thousands of euro.
Comparison with private jet hire
"If we didn't have the Falcon and had to hire an air taxi for the mission, you are talking north of €200,000," a source told the Irish Mirror. The state previously spent heavily on chartering private planes for senior politicians. Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Helen McEntee told the Dail in April that the State had spent €3.2 million in the previous five years on hiring private jets, including a trip for then Tánaiste and current Taoiseach Micheal Martin to Egypt and Israel in November 2023, which cost some €158,000.
The Falcon 6X in service
The Falcon 6X, known as the Government Jet but technically called the Air Corps strategic reach aircraft, was added to the fleet in December last year for €53 million. It came into service in March, and its first operational flight was to take Taoiseach Micheal Martin to Madrid and back on March 10. From March to July, the aircraft flew senior politicians on 30 occasions, with 13 of those flights for Mr Martin. Other flights catered for Tánaiste Simon Harris, Minister for Defence and Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee, and Minister for Children Norma Foley among others.
The 14-passenger jet is normally used to ferry VIPs like President Catherine Connolly and Taoiseach Micheal Martin, but it can also carry out other missions, such as the high-risk repatriation of Kinahan, alleged to be the leader of the €1.5 billion drugs and crime cartel. Other roles include transporting members of the Army Ranger Wing to overseas missions, logistics flights, emergency evacuation of Irish citizens abroad, and air ambulance taskings for seriously ill patients. The Air Corps previously used a Gulfstream IV as the government jet, but that was retired in 2014, and the smaller Learjet 45 was deemed no longer reliable in around 2021, leading to the state hiring private jets at massive cost.
