Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy took a private jet from Columbus to Paris on the night of Saturday, July 4, according to flight records cited by The Rooster, a Columbus-based newsletter that has tracked his private air travel throughout the campaign.
Flight-tracking data cited by the newsletter shows a Bombardier Global 5500 departed John Glenn Columbus International Airport at about 10:20 p.m. Saturday and landed at Paris’s Le Bourget Airport — a hub for private aviation on the northern edge of the city — at 11:16 a.m. local time Sunday, a flight of roughly 6 hours and 56 minutes.
The transatlantic leg burned an estimated 3,511 gallons of jet fuel at an estimated fuel cost of about $21,065 and produced an estimated 34 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the flight-tracking data. The Rooster put the combined cost of the trip — including a short repositioning flight the day before, from the Ohio State University Airport to John Glenn Columbus International — at roughly $21,700, with about 35 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
The Rooster has connected the Bombardier Global 5500 to Ramaswamy through an aviation source it granted anonymity and through flight records it says match his publicly known appearances. The newsletter has previously reported that the jet, operated by MDO Capital, flies out of the Ohio State University Airport. TiffinOhio.net has not independently confirmed the identity of the aircraft’s passengers.
The Paris flight is the latest in a series of trips the newsletter has documented this year. In June, The Rooster published flight records for the Bombardier jet, reporting that it had flown 54 times in 2026 at an estimated $200,000 in costs, including trips to Portugal, Greece, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and Puerto Rico. The newsletter described the Paris flight as Ramaswamy’s fifth international trip of the year.
In March, TiffinOhio.net reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign paid nearly $12,000 to an exclusive Puerto Rico resort, an expenditure listed as travel in filings with the Ohio Secretary of State.
The trip coincided with extreme heat on both sides of the Atlantic. Much of Ohio was under an Excessive Heat Warning through the evening of Friday, July 3, as a heat dome pushed heat-index values into the triple digits, according to the National Weather Service and state forecasters; highs on July 4 eased slightly into the upper 80s and low 90s. In France, Meteo-France recorded the country’s hottest day on record on June 24 during a heat wave that the country’s public health agency linked to roughly 1,000 excess deaths over three days at its late-June peak, an estimate the agency said was likely to rise. France 24 later reported 2,025 excess deaths in France for the month. The Rooster juxtaposed the flight’s carbon emissions with the heat waves.
Ramaswamy has previously defended his private air travel. His campaign told Heartland Signal that he covers the costs with his own money rather than donor funds, and that flying allows him to reach voters across Ohio’s 88 counties. Those statements concerned campaign travel within the United States; the Paris flight appears to be personal. Ramaswamy and his campaign have also disputed some of The Rooster’s past reporting and criticized its author.
Energy and climate policy are central to the governor’s race. Ramaswamy has campaigned on expanding Ohio’s fossil-fuel and nuclear energy production and on accelerating data center development across the state.
Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-area businessman, won the Republican nomination for governor in May and faces Democrat Amy Acton in the Nov. 3 general election. His running mate is state Senate President Rob McColley; Acton’s is former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper.
