Audio By Carbonatix
The Dallas Mavericks’ Boeing 767-200
Mark Cuban has a piece of a pretty nifty fleet of planes: a Boeing 767-200, which holds 102 passengers in cushy comfort, and a 757-200, which’ll travel 63 folks willing to suffer with “lavatories so large they have windows.” Both appear to be used by the Dallas Mavericks during the NBA season, but when the Mavs are off, the planes keeps flying — and they’re probably not the cheapest charters, neither. Hence, its off-season duties in recent days schlepping world leaders (which proved slightly controversial) and golf pros around the globe.
British prime minister Gordon Brown traveled to the G8 summit in Japan on one of the fine fleet — this story doesn’t say whether it was the big plane or the smaller one. Regardless, Brown, along with the other world leaders who were in Japan to sort out all our environmental ills over a billion-course meal of Komodo Dragon and baby unicorn, is catching hell from these CO2-emissions watchdogs for leaving such a massive carbon footprint — since the plane flew empty from Dallas to London, so’s Brown could hop over to Japan for the whassup.
Now, the PGA’s touting the 767 as the fancy-pants mode of transpo for golfers headed from Illinois to the British Open — among them, Zach Johnson, Rich Beem, Tom Lehman, David Duval and Mark Calcavecchia. And two friends fly free, save for the $1,000-per-seat charitable donation, a bargain. Especially since they get to use the same plane to fly back to the Canadian Open. –Robert Wilonsky
