Jim Carrey’s Private Jet: Inside the Gulfstream V That Still Wears His Initials

There is a 1998 Gulfstream V based at Van Nuys that carries the registration N162JC. The last two letters are the giveaway, and they have outlasted the arrangement that put them there.

The Jim Carrey private jet story is a single airframe told across three ownership entities. He bought it in 2006, handed it to a charter operator in 2009, and by September 2019 the FAA registry listed somebody else entirely.

This article covers the aircraft in full: serial number, engines, range, the cabin layout that made it famous online, the 2024 flight data, and exactly who holds the registration today.

Jim Carrey’s Private Jet Fleet

One aircraft, and only ever one. Carrey has never assembled a multi-jet fleet, and there is no record of a second airframe registered to him at any point.

Gulfstream VN162JC · serial 539 · Sloan Harry Evans Trustee

Active · registration changed 2019

Acquired by Carrey2006 (1998 airframe)

Range6,500 NM

Max speedMach 0.885

PassengersTypically 13 to 16

Engines2x Rolls-Royce BR710A1-10

Reported price~$59M (reports vary)

That single-aircraft record puts him at the quiet end of this series. Tyler Perry runs four aircraft and Larry Ellison has cycled through a collection that included ex-military types.

Carrey bought one long-range jet and kept it for well over a decade. The interesting part is what happened to the paperwork around it.

The Origin Story: One Airframe, Three Registrations

Serial 539 has stayed in the same corner of Los Angeles for most of its life. What changed was the name on the certificate.

The 2006 purchase price is the number to treat with care. A 1998 Gulfstream V was a used airframe by then, and the widely repeated $59 million figure sits well above what the type traded for on the pre-owned market that year.

A new Gulfstream V listed in the high thirties to low forties of millions when production ended in 2002. Any figure near $59 million would have to include a substantial interior refit, and no source documents one.

Inside the Aircraft: The Gulfstream V

The Gulfstream V was the aircraft that invented the ultra-long-range business jet category. When it entered service in 1997 nothing else in private aviation could fly 6,500 nautical miles nonstop.

Carrey’s example is a mid-production airframe, serial 539 out of a run of 193. It is powered by two Rolls-Royce BR710A1-10 turbofans producing just under 15,000 pounds of thrust each.

With 6,500 NM in the tanks the aircraft will fly Los Angeles to London or Los Angeles to Tokyo without stopping. That was class-leading in 1998 and is still respectable against the current crop of longest-range private jets.

The cabin runs 50 feet 10 inches long and encloses about 1,595 cubic feet, which is more volume than a Gulfstream G550 offers despite the G550 being the newer aircraft. Gulfstream stretched the fuselage rather than the cabin when it moved on from the GV.

The Cabin: Three Zones, Six Berths, and a PlayStation

The interior is what pushed this jet into circulation online. Descriptions consistently place it in three zones, with two given over to lounging and entertainment rather than work.

The layout is reported as eight executive seats plus two divans that seat up to three each, with six of those positions convertible into sleeper berths. That is a conventional long-range configuration executed in hand-stitched leather and wood veneer.

Behind the main cabin there is a private aft bedroom with a full-size bed and its own bathroom, which is standard practice on the aircraft on our list of private jets with bedrooms.

The detail that gets repeated most often is the gaming setup. Multiple accounts describe a dedicated PlayStation installation wired into the cabin screens, alongside satellite television and a stocked bar.

The other practical touch is the humidifier. Long-range cabins run extremely dry at 51,000 feet, and added humidification is one of the few genuine comfort upgrades on a 14-hour leg.

Who Actually Owns N162JC Now

This is where most coverage of Jim Carrey’s private jet stops short. The FAA registry currently lists the owner of N162JC as Sloan Harry Evans Trustee, an individual registration based in Woodland Hills, California.

That is the trust of Harry Evans Sloan, the film financier and former chairman and chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The certificate was issued on September 26, 2019.

The registration before that belonged to Trans-Exec Air Service from 2009, and before that to Carrey James Eugene Trustee. Only the first of those three is Carrey himself.

Carrey is still widely described as the aircraft’s main user, and some sources treat him as the beneficial operator rather than the registrant. Neither Carrey nor Sloan has commented publicly on the arrangement.

Holding an aircraft through a trust is completely routine and carries no implication of anything unusual. It does mean the public registry stops being a reliable guide to who is actually on board.

The Charter Years: Renting Out Your Own Jet

The 2009 move to Trans-Exec Air Service was the most economically interesting decision in this story. Trans-Exec managed the aircraft and put it on the charter market when Carrey was not flying it.

The reported charter rate was around $8,000 per hour. That is roughly in line with what a Gulfstream V commanded on the market at the time.

The logic is straightforward. A long-range jet sitting on the ramp still costs its owner crew salaries, hangarage, insurance, and scheduled maintenance, so charter revenue offsets fixed costs on an aircraft that would otherwise be idle most of the year.

It also creates a data problem for anyone tracking the jet. Once an aircraft is in charter service, a meaningful share of its flights carry paying strangers rather than its owner.

Flight Activity and Emissions

N162JC is not a lightly used aircraft. Tracking data for 2024 logged around 65 flights and 166 flight hours, which works out to a departure roughly every three days.

Those hours consumed an estimated 73,661 gallons of Jet A at a fuel cost near $442,000. The resulting carbon figure lands around 705 metric tons of CO2 for the year.

The per-hour number is the more portable one. A Gulfstream V burns roughly 430 gallons an hour in cruise, which converts to about 4,100 kg of CO2 for every hour in the air.

Against the rest of this series that is a mid-table result. The Gulfstream V burns meaningfully less than the converted airliners flown by Steven Spielberg and Drake, and more than the smaller Falcons.

Carrey has never been named in the celebrity emissions rankings that pulled in Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner. He also has not made climate advocacy part of his public identity, which is what gives those stories their hook.

The tracking record does show short hops, including several legs under 25 miles (40 km) between Van Nuys and other Los Angeles area fields. Those are almost always empty repositioning flights rather than passenger trips.

Where N162JC Actually Flies

The route map is more revealing than any single flight. Van Nuys appears as the origin or destination on nearly every leg, which is unsurprising for the busiest general aviation airport in the United States.

The transcontinental spine

Van Nuys to Teterboro is the most frequent long leg, roughly 2,150 nautical miles and about five hours westbound to eastbound. Washington Dulles turns up often enough to be a pattern rather than a one-off.

One documented July 2024 flight ran Washington Dulles to San Francisco, 2,086 nautical miles in five hours and 12 minutes. Another covered Aspen to Van Nuys at 650 nautical miles.

The Canada connection

Vancouver and Toronto both appear regularly in the destination list. Carrey was born in Newmarket, Ontario, and held Canadian citizenship alone until he was naturalized as a US citizen in October 2004.

Toronto is 1,970 nautical miles from Van Nuys, which the Gulfstream covers nonstop with a large fuel reserve. It is the sort of routing that justifies owning a long-range aircraft rather than a mid-size one.

Hawaii and the Pacific

Kahului on Maui shows up as a recurring destination, a 2,050 nautical mile overwater leg from Southern California. That crossing is the standard proving ground for the class of private jets that can fly to Hawaii.

California to Ireland, 2015

The longest documented single trip in the aircraft’s celebrity-era record is a 2015 run from California to Ireland. That is close to 4,500 nautical miles and comfortably inside the GV’s book range.

How Jim Carrey’s Jet Compares

One aircraft, a 1998 airframe, no custom livery and no nickname. By the standards of this series that is close to minimalism.

The closest match in the series is Lionel Messi, who flies the same type. Messi had his aircraft painted with his family’s names on the airstair, which is the opposite of Carrey’s approach.

Carrey is also not one of the celebrity pilots in this series. Unlike John Travolta, Harrison Ford, or Tom Cruise, he has never publicly held a pilot certificate, and the jet has always been flown by professional crews.

Set against the wider field of Hollywood celebrities with private jets, N162JC reads as a tool bought once and used properly for twenty years. The identity attached to it has simply outlived the ownership.