“Most celebrities don't actually own their jets — they lease or charter them.”

There are three ways to fly private without owning anything: on-demand charter (pay per trip), jet cards (prepaid hours), and fractional ownership (buying a share in a fleet, as with NetJets or Flexjet). For someone who flies 50–100 hours a year — most touring musicians and actors — these are far cheaper and simpler than owning, so that is what most of them do.

Whole ownership starts making sense above roughly 200–300 hours a year, or when privacy and control matter more than money. FAA registration records show many celebrity jets registered to LLCs or trusts rather than to the person, which is legal, normal, and one reason people assume the jet is 'leased' when it is in fact owned.

There are also hybrids. A jet can be owned by a star but managed and chartered out by an operator such as VistaJet or Clay Lacy, so a fan booking a charter could in theory fly in it. And the reverse happens: a jet with a celebrity's name painted on it (Drake's Air Drake, for instance) may be provided under a commercial arrangement rather than purchased.

The rumour is a good default assumption; the exceptions are just very visible.