First lady Melania Trump took 21 flights in a three-month period on Air Force jets at a cost of more than $675,000 before she moved to the White House in June 2017, military records show.

Air Force jets flew Mrs. Trump to and from New York City, Florida and Washington under an arrangement unlike any modern first lady because she was living in New York after President Donald Trump’s inauguration to allow their son Barron to finish the fifth grade.

While the first lady was living in Trump Tower in Manhattan, Air Force jets made at least 19 trips to LaGuardia Airport in New York and nine trips to Florida’s Palm Beach International Airport to drop off or pick up Mrs. Trump, according to military records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The records, received after a public-records request filed by the Journal, cover the period from the inauguration through April 2017. The request for the records was filed at the beginning of May, the last full month before Mrs. Trump moved to Washington.

Before becoming president, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, for their travel. In 2012, Mr. Trump tweeted several times about a ski trip by Mrs. Obama to Colorado that cost $83,000 for Secret Service protection, accommodations, flights, rental cars and food, according to records tabulated by Judicial Watch, a conservative group.


Mr. Trump also tweeted about Mrs. Obama’s 2010 trip to Spain with one of her daughters, writing of Mr. and Mrs. Obama: “They love to spend money.” A spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama declined to comment.

“It is no secret that Mrs. Trump lived in New York City the first few months of the administration so that her son could finish school. The trips mentioned in this story are examples of Mrs. Trump juggling dual roles—putting her son first while also fulfilling some of her duties as First Lady,” said Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump.

Several members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet have faced scrutiny over travel expenses, including Tom Price, who stepped down as Health and Human Services secretary last fall after uproar over his extensive use of private and military flights.

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There have been no suggestions that Mrs. Trump’s travel is improper. Mrs. Obama and other recent first ladies moved straight into the White House with their husbands and didn’t have expenses that come from living 225 miles away. Mrs. Obama’s solo travel cost more than $2.8 million over eight years, according to similar records obtained by Judicial Watch. That amounts to an average of about $350,000 a year—a little more than half of what Mrs. Trump accrued in the three-month period before she moved to Washington.


To be sure, taxpayers shell out far less for a first lady to travel than for a president. “It’s certainly not as expensive as moving the president anywhere, and it’s usually done with a very small footprint,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to ex-first lady Laura Bush.

Mrs. Trump’s trips to and from New York and Palm Beach were particularly costly because the Air Force jets she flew were based at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington and in some instances needed to fly without passengers to pick her up or to return to the base.

To accommodate Mrs. Trump, 27 flights were made without passengers while jets flew back and forth to Trump family residences in New York and Palm Beach, and then back to Joint Base Andrews, the records released to the Journal show.

Air Force spokeswoman Erika A. Yepsen declined to comment specifically about the flights by Mrs. Trump. “The Air Force works diligently to ensure it acts as a good steward of taxpayers’ money while meeting the requirements of every mission it’s assigned regardless of where the mission occurs, what the mission is or who the mission supports,” the spokeswoman said.

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Most of the Air Force trips by Mrs. Trump were on a C-37A or C-37B, the military equivalents of the commercial Gulfstream V or Gulfstream 550, the military records show. Those jets cost $10,075 an hour to fly, according to the Defense Department schedule of hourly rates.


The Journal requested flight manifests to learn who flew on the jets with Mrs. Trump, but the Air Force said manifests for White House directed missions are typically destroyed after the flights.

Mrs. Trump’s most expensive trip cost $106,627, the records show. She took a C-32A, which is the equivalent of a Boeing 757 and costs about $16,000 an hour to fly, according to the rate schedule.

On April 13, a C-32A departed Andrews and flew to LaGuardia to pick up Mrs. Trump, and then departed for Florida, where she met the president and spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. At the Palm Beach airport, Mrs. Trump’s plane was waiting on the tarmac when Air Force One arrived, according to a media pool report. After Mrs. Trump got off the jetliner, it returned to Andrews.

Write to Peter Nicholas at peter.nicholas@wsj.com