HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro will begin publicly disclosing when he uses taxpayer-funded Pennsylvania State Police aircraft, a change that follows questions from state lawmakers and Spotlight PA.
Shapiro and other governors have long used a different plane, operated by PennDOT, for official business inside and outside the commonwealth. For more than a decade, state law has required PennDOT to post logs of the plane’s use that disclose which officials were on flights and the cost.
No such requirement governs State Police aviation. But under recent questioning by state lawmakers, officials for the first time disclosed that Shapiro uses the agency’s aircraft.
That means an undisclosed number of flights were hidden from public view, obscuring the full tally of Shapiro’s frequent taxpayer-funded travel.
“How many planes does one governor need?” quipped longtime good-government activist Eric Epstein.
Shapiro made heavy use of the PennDOT-operated plane in his first two years in office as he barnstormed the state for hundreds of public appearances, handled multiple crises and a six-month budget impasse, and attended a handful of sporting events.
In 2023, he took more total flights, spent more hours in the air, and racked up more flight costs than any first-year Pennsylvania governor in at least the past 12 years.
He still regularly rode the PennDOT plane in 2024, but his usage decreased. Total logged flight hours, for instance, fell from about 149 to 116.
Spotlight PA first became aware of the possible State Police flights in late 2024 and filed a public records request seeking documentation on Feb. 17.
The next day, State Police leadership confirmed during questioning by state Senate Republican lawmakers that the agency had transported Shapiro and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis in its aircraft.
During the public budget hearing, Lt. Col. George Bivens said the flights “have all been for official business, meetings, or an event, and it's an incident or an issue that occurred somewhere in the commonwealth, and we needed to transport the governor to get there.”
Bivens said that, anecdotally, requests to use State Police aircraft have come when the PennDOT-operated plane “was not available, whether it was down for maintenance or pilot unavailability.”
Other State Police missions, like surveillance or extradition, take precedence over the governor’s use of the plane, Bivens added.
Bivens did not specify the number of flights or their exact circumstances beyond saying that such trips were typically requested by Shapiro’s security detail. He added that he wasn’t aware of any out-of-state flights or ones “that would have been campaign-related versus official business.”
Spotlight PA reached out to the governor’s office on Feb. 19 with specific questions about the governor’s use of State Police aircraft.
In response, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said the administration would begin publishing State Police aviation logs for flights “involving the Governor or the Lieutenant Governor in the same manner and frequency as PennDOT flight logs.”
“This represents yet another transparency measure by our Administration that goes further than what anyone in the Legislature is subject to or voluntarily abides by,” Bonder said.
The last time a state plane flight appears to have been requested by a member of the legislature was in 2014, according to a Spotlight PA analysis of PennDOT records.
Pennsylvania senators can lease state-owned vehicles. State House lawmakers banned the practice for new members in 2022 but allowed those who were already leasing these cars to keep using them. All state elected officials can also receive mileage reimbursements. The state Senate posts all reimbursements, including mileage, online; the House does not.
Bonder said the administration believes criticism of Shapiro’s flights are “bad faith attacks from some who would prefer the Governor not work as hard as he does or show up in Pennsylvania communities outside the Capitol building.”
“The Governor and his Administration believe the job of Governor cannot be done simply from behind a desk and will remain focused on getting stuff done for all Pennsylvanians,” he said.
State Police and the governor’s office, Bonder added, “work together to make the most responsible choices to keep everyone safe while minimizing costs.”
Bonder did not respond to questions about the process by which the governor’s office decides to use State Police aircraft or how many flights Shapiro has taken.
State Sen. Scott Martin (R., Lancaster), who questioned officials about the flights, said Shapiro’s use of State Police aircraft “all boils down to transparency and accountability.”
“Taxpayers deserve to know when their money that is supposed to be dedicated to the State Police to meet public safety needs is diverted to accommodate non-emergency travel for the convenience of the governor,” he said in a statement Wednesday in response to Shapiro’s promise to post State Police flight logs.
Bonder did not provide a timeline for releasing information about the flights, and independently calculating how many unlogged hours Shapiro racked up using State Police planes is difficult.
However, using public flight trackers, Spotlight PA identified several flights that appear to be associated with State Police and aligned with Shapiro’s busy schedule starting in December 2024.
Spotlight PA found a plane, registered to agency maintenance contractor Skytech, whose flight path brought it from Philadelphia to Altoona and back on the same day that Shapiro appeared at a last-minute news conference announcing the capture of Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Subsequent flights by the same plane match more of Shapiro’s public appearances, including a visit to Scranton on Dec. 13 and a planned speech in Harrisburg before the state’s Electoral College on Dec. 17.
“I came from Philadelphia, [Shapiro’s] coming from Philadelphia,” Lawrence Tabas, chair of the State Republican Party, joked as he announced Shapiro was running late. “I guess I went a little bit faster on the Turnpike than he did.”
Tabas later said that “the governor’s plane” had been rerouted to Lancaster due to weather Shapiro and couldn’t appear — matching the flight path of the plane identified by Spotlight PA.
The State Police and Skytech, the state contractor, did not reply to a request for comment about the flights. Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesperson, didn’t address specific questions about the flights identified by Spotlight PA.
Bonder said State Police logs will match the format and schedule of the PennDOT logs required by state law.
The law mandates that PennDOT make public the date, destination, length, purpose, cost, and passengers on any flight using a department aircraft. The data are released once a month, covering flights that occurred in the previous month.
In budget hearings, Republican senators raised concerns that the PennDOT logs aren’t comprehensive enough and that existing policies around access to those planes allow for nonessential uses.
Along with the statute-required logs, PennDOT’s policy says the plane can be used when commercial flights “are not available to reach the travel destination”; when commercial flights do not accommodate state officials’ time constraints; when those traveling “must conduct Commonwealth business enroute”; or when “security, threat level, or operational requirements preclude use of commercial airlines or other forms of transportation,” such as in emergency and disaster situations.
The policy also says that the plane may not be used to commute.
Despite the policy, it's rarely clear why officials use the PennDOT-operated plane. State law requires agencies to report the “public purpose of the trip,” but in practice, they do not. PennDOT listed every flight as either “business” or “maintenance” in the past two years. The logs also lump together all flight legs and passengers into a single entry, making it impossible to know when individual passengers get on or off, or the full cost to each agency.
The governor has top priority in booking flights through PennDOT, followed by the lieutenant governor, then statewide elected commonwealth officials, members of the governor's cabinet and senior staff, board and commission chairs, and legislative leadership — all on a first-come, first-served basis.
Asked about the plane policy by state Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R., Lehigh) during a budget hearing, PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll responded, “I do not question the governor or lieutenant governor’s requests to use the plane.”
Coleman, who is an active commercial pilot, said in a statement to Spotlight PA that he was still concerned that PennDOT’s flight data format was “woefully inadequate.” Continuing to use the format would “mask the true use of the airplanes and thwart a comprehensive evaluation of their use,” he continued.
“The governor’s assertion that he is being subjected to ‘bad faith’ attacks sounds like a thin-skinned response from someone who is not used to having his actions questioned and operating in an echo chamber of ‘yes, governor.’”
Spotlight PA’s Angela Couloumbis contributed reporting.
