Google's former CEO charges the company $7,500 an hour to use his private planes - but he's not making a profit
Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO, "owns 100% of one aircraft and 33% of another aircraft, both of which are used by Eric and our other executive officers from time to time for business trips," the filing states.
As a result, the board of directors approved a reimbursement rate of $7,500 an hour for use of the plane. The $396,000 payment for 2015 meant that Alphabet executives spent approximately 52 hours on Schmidt's planes.
Luckily for Alphabet, that's less than what they had to shell out in 2014.
Last year, Google had to pay Eric Schmidt $672,400 just to fly guests to one conference. In previous years, the company paid $61,706 in airplane reimbursements in 2013. The year before, his plane tab was a much lower $14,018.
It's a lot of money, but the company insists the former Google CEO isn't making profit.
"Due to the fact that the $7,500 hourly rate paid for the use of these aircraft is less than the actual operational costs incurred by Eric as owner of these aircraft, Eric does not profit from the use of these aircraft," the filing states.
But, Alphabet does make some money back thanks to owning the airport that Schmidt flies out of when his aircraft are not being used for business use.
Alphabet became the operator of Moffett Airfield in early 2015 and has since let Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Ram Shriram, and Schmidt use it for their private planes.
That does come with a charge, which filing states is "non-preferential", to fly into it. In 2015, the company charged the four a total of $1,725,222 for using the airfield.
Alphabet did not immediately respond for request for comment.