Sun Valley Billionaire Conference Draws Scorn From Local Pilots

To those in the know, the truest American holiday begins a week after Independence Day. That’s when industry leaders — CEOs, media moguls and late-night TV stars — descend onto rural Idaho en masse. Their destination is the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, a press-free, invite-only retreat with roots in the early ’80s. Though the conference has no expressed purpose, it is understood to be a finance meeting, in which the American elite can kick back, form relationships and talk business.

Sun Valley, ID is a dream. Set at the foot of Bald Mountain, it has long served as a resort town, built to boom during the winter ski season. Though it houses less than 1,800 year-round, it is the centerpiece of a storied history. In 1939, Ernest Hemingway completed For Whom the Bell Tolls in the Valley Lodge. His love for the town brought it into the public eye, and its situation in the developing West made it attractive to the stars of Hollywood. In the years that followed, the resort became a personal favorite of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. Fame begot fame, and Sun Valley’s popularity exploded. In the years after Hemingway finished his novel, the sleepy mountain town became a hub for West Coast vogue, and the perfect candidate for a billionaires’ retreat.

The Sun Valley Conference is hosted by Allen & Company, a luxury, boutique investment bank founded by the Allen family in 1922. Per company policy, this year’s guests will be asked to stay off the record, an important safety measure given the presence of media tycoons like Anderson Cooper (CNN) and Gayle King (CBS). Other attendees include Sam Altman (OpenAI), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bob Iger (Disney), Oprah Winfrey (Oprah) and Shari Redstone, in a rare public appearance since negotiations began to sell her family’s stake in Paramount Global. Idaho Governor Brad Little will also make an appearance. Though the details of the conference are kept under wraps, deals emerging shortly after its conclusion inevitably draw speculation. It is widely believed that Jeff Bezos’s decision to purchase the Washington Post was the result of six hours of covert conversation with then-Post chairman Don E. Graham during the 2013 conference. He officially acquired the paper for $250 million that September.

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The conference attendees descend upon Sun Valley in a whirlwind of private jets, a logistical nightmare given the size of the local Friedman Memorial Airport. Recent changes to FAA regulations enable jet owners to conceal their flight data from tracking sites, so the exact number of planes landing in Sun Valley this weekend is unknown. Over 100 non-concealed jets have landed at Friedman, per Flight Aware, though the anticipated number is closer to 165. The result is that Atlantic Aviation, the airport’s fixed based operator (FBO) is cracking under pressure. Though some private jets have shuttled to airports as far as Salt Lake City, overcrowding has prompted increased fees, likely tailored to the conference attendees. In the commotion of the week, the Atlantic has forsaken local pilots, forcing them to pay those fines without advanced notice.

“Every FBO across the US has some kind of fee to cover for the facility,” one Seattle pilot who requested to remain anonymous told InsideHook. “These kinds of fees I’m aware of and expect to pay if I don’t purchase gas.” But the fee charged during the conference is a special case: “I don’t meet the minimum requirement of income to be charged such outrageous prices,” explained the pilot, who spent nearly $1,000 to drop off a few friends.

The Seattle pilot was not informed of the fee in advance, despite scourging Atlantic’s website and calling their front desk two hours in advance. He believes their negligence was predatory. “The billionaires and millionaires have always gone into SV for the functions and activities but only in the last few years have these large FBOs charged event fees to the non-participating pilots like myself,” he wrote. “They are taking advantage of the situation. These crazy fees are killing general aviation pilots across the U.S.”