Gulfstream V N889KH flies from Lexington to Columbus in 31 minutes

Dr. Charles Huang's Gulfstream V, tail number N889KH, flew from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, to John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio on Friday, October 23, 2026. The flight departed at 01:17 UTC and landed at 01:48 UTC, spending just 31 minutes in the air. The great-circle distance between the two airports is 144 nautical miles, or 165 miles.

Blue Grass Airport's longest runway is 7,004 feet, and its elevation is 979 feet. John Glenn Columbus International Airport has a longest runway of 10,114 feet and sits at 815 feet elevation. The distance from the aircraft's home base at Van Nuys Airport to Columbus is 1,728 nautical miles.

The aircraft covered that distance at an average ground speed of 279 knots, reaching a top speed of 414 knots and a highest altitude of 23,025 feet. The flight burned an estimated 216 US gallons of fuel, producing about 2,079 kilograms of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 5,146 miles. N889KH is a 1998 Gulfstream V, the original ultra-long-range Gulfstream, with a range of 6,675 nautical miles, a top speed of Mach 0.885, a ceiling of 51,000 feet, and seating for up to 16 passengers.

In the 30 days before this flight, N889KH visited 21 airports in 5 countries and flew about 22,743 nautical miles. The longest leg in that period was from Boston to Van Nuys on September 25, covering 2,261 nautical miles. Over those 30 days, the aircraft made 27 flights, spent 63.7 hours in the air, and produced an estimated 257,197 kilograms of CO2.

This was the second landing at Columbus in the tracked window of 39 flights between September 11 and October 22, 2026. The previous landing at Columbus was just one day earlier, on October 22. The aircraft is based at Van Nuys Airport in California, and its most common destinations in that window were Teterboro, Nashville, and Van Nuys. Another tracked aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air B200GT belonging to Mike DeWine, landed at Columbus about six hours earlier.

Dr. Charles Huang is a Chinese-American investor and philanthropist based in Pasadena, California. He founded Pasaca Capital Inc., a private-equity firm, and Innova Medical Group, which became a major distributor of COVID-19 tests. Through the Charles Huang Foundation, he has donated millions to universities and hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, and China. No public events or meetings tied to Dr. Charles Huang were found near Columbus on this date.

Before this flight, the aircraft had been on the ground at Lexington for about 10 hours, having arrived from Columbus the previous day. That prior leg from Columbus to Lexington took 37 minutes over 142 nautical miles. The flight before that was from Teterboro to Columbus, covering 419 nautical miles in 1 hour 15 minutes.

The flight used just 2 percent of the aircraft's range, a short hop for a jet built to cross oceans. N889KH remains at Columbus as of its last tracked position.