Silicon Valley billionaire flies coach out of solidarity: ‘If I’m going to ask my employees to do it, I need to do it, too’

In an industry known for private jets and lavish perks, Palmer Luckey, the 33-year-old billionaire founder of Oculus VR and the defense technology company Anduril, cuts a distinct figure. Despite a net worth built on a multibillion-dollar sale to Facebook (struck while he was still in his 20s) and a rapidly growing defense empire, Luckey can be found flying economy class, he told podcast hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri in 2022. His reasoning is rooted in a philosophy of leadership solidarity: “If I’m going to ask my employees to do it, I need to do it, too.”

Luckey revealed his travel habits during a conversation on the “My First Million” podcast, explaining that his company, Anduril, enforces a strict travel policy. To conserve resources, the company generally covers only coach travel for employees. Luckey views upgrading to business or first class as a poor use of company funds, noting that the cost difference could consume a “serious fraction” of resources given the volume of travel required for his staff.

However, Luckey said he takes this policy a step further than most executives. Even when paying for travel out of his own pocket, he refuses to upgrade. “I expect my employees to fly coach and even like, yes, I have a lot of money but … if I don’t also do it, it feels like I’m out of touch,” Luckey explained. He argued that maintaining the same standard as his workforce prevents him from becoming an aloof leader who is unaware of the daily realities his team faces. “Maybe one day coach gets so bad that I tell everyone, ‘Guys, you know what I hear, we’re all all go in business now,'” he joked.

That position fits with a broader philosophy he outlined separately in the interview, where he warned employees to be wary of any boss who claims money “is not the real objective” while still expecting them to treat their jobs as rational financial decisions.

Flying coach while cracking down on cartels

The decision is particularly striking given Luckey’s profile and the security risks associated with his work. Anduril develops advanced autonomous weapons systems and at the time of recording had won a nearly $1 billion counter-drone contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command. Luckey acknowledged that between political detractors and the “Mexican cartels that we’ve cost hundreds of millions of dollars in drug trade,” there are legitimate security concerns regarding his safety. Yet, Luckey maintained that the secure zone of an airport and a commercial airliner are relatively safe environments. Other notable contracts since then include another drone deal, worth $642.2 million, with the U.S. Navy in March 2025, and a $250 million drone defense system deal with the Pentagon, reached in October 2024.

Luckey’s affinity for commercial flight also stems from family history. He said that his grandfather was a pilot for United Airlines for over 40 years, and the whole sector still inspires him. “There is a certain Romanticism to, like, mass-market, available air travel, like, what an incredible thing and we did it, America did it, we figured out how to make it economically viable and we build everyone else’s airplanes. Like, it is an American thing.” He said he views the ability to move people economically across the globe as a distinctly American technological triumph, so he’s content sitting in the back of the plane—although he typically requests a window seat—and waiting for everyone else to deplane before he moves.

He also described building Oculus on a shoestring, recalling stretches where a needed part costing around 50 dollars felt “inconceivable” to afford while he worked minimum-wage jobs and flipped broken iPhones on eBay to fund his VR experiments. Even after Facebook bought Oculus, he said he imposed a “100K Club” cap so that no one at the startup, including the CEO, made more than $100,000 in salary before the acquisition. On the podcast, he portrayed his personal frugality—including coach flights—as an extension of that culture of cost discipline rather than a publicity stunt.

The podcast hosts greeted Luckey’s policy with a mixture of disbelief and respect, calling it an “absolute nonsense policy” for a billionaire while acknowledging its discipline. For Luckey, who often attends high-level government meetings in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, flying coach is just another way he disrupts the standard executive narrative.

More recently, Luckey has made clear that despite his famous frugality, he is not anti-wealth or anti-billionaire, specifically. The news of a potential wealth tax in California brought fierce opposition from the youthful founder, who engaged directly on social media with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna’s seeming message of “good riddance” to billionaires who might flee the state. “You are fighting to force founders like me to sell huge chunks of our companies to pay for fraud, waste, and political favors for the organizations pushing this ballot initiative. I made my money from my first company, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on it, used the remainder to start a second company that employs six thousand people, and now me and my cofounders have to somehow come up with billions of dollars in cash. And if we can’t, the state is going to seize my home and garnish my wages for the rest of my life.”

Days after Luckey’s warning, Google co-founder Larry Page was revealed to have decamped to Florida, in a move highly reminiscent of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ own departure from Washington state in 2023. The New York Times subsequently reported that Google co-founder Sergey Brin was leaving California as well.

Anduril did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Luckey’s travel arrangements have changed in the years since.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com