The Yankees’ New Pitcher Rented a Boeing 787 to Fly From Japan

Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who signed a seven-year, $155 million contract with the New York Yankees last month, didn’t waste any time when it came to spending some of that newfound wealth: on Sunday, he chartered a brand-new Boeing 787 Dreamliner to fly himself and six other passengers from Japan to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Total cost of the flight, chartered from Japan Airlines? $200,000, the New York Times reports. FlightAware, which tracks commercial flights, had no data available for the journey.

The 787, Boeing’s newest jet, is a twin-engine super-modern aircraft with anywhere between 210 and 330 seats, depending on how airlines choose to configure them. Tanaka, not the Yankees, made the unusual call to charter a jet typically filled with at least a couple hundred people, the Times reports.

Why rent a 787? Tanaka’s due to make his pinstripes debut this week, and he wanted to beat a snowstorm currently impacting travel in the U.S. — but that doesn’t totally explain why he didn’t charter a more reasonable long-range jet for the journey. The aircraft also didn’t carry any passengers on its ferry flight back to Tokyo, making Tanaka’s adventure far from the greenest of travel arrangements.

[New York Times]