A FIFA spokesman told BBC Sport: “The FIFA President travels regularly with relevant officials on business and tournament-related matters and tries to visit FIFA member associations whenever he can.
“Sometimes travel is organized by commercial (including low-cost) airlines, and sometimes by private charter, depending on what is more efficient and cost-effective under the circumstances.”
We asked FIFA whether any flights to World Cup games are operated by commercial airlines, how many people travel on Qatar Executive and whether FIFA offsets these emissions, but it did not respond.
Freddie Daly, who works for climate action sports network Cool Down, called Infantino’s apparent use of a private jet at the World Cup “a symptom of FIFA’s failures on the environment and sustainability.”
“The fact that Infantino chose to use a private jet is completely contrary to the level of leadership we should see at the top of FIFA on environmental issues,” says Daly, a researcher at the University of Sussex.
Private jets have a “completely disproportionate impact,” says Denise Auclair, a sustainable tourism expert at the European Federation for Transport and the Environment. “They pollute 5 to 14 times more than commercial airplanes and 50 times more than trains.”