Dr. Charles Huang's Gulfstream V N889KH returns to Van Nuys from Las Vegas

Dr. Charles Huang's Gulfstream V, tail number N889KH, flew from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas to Van Nuys Airport on Saturday, November 7, 2026. The flight departed at 03:25 UTC and landed at 04:12 UTC, spending 47 minutes in the air. The great-circle distance between the two airports is 197 nautical miles, or 226 miles.

The aircraft covered that distance at an average ground speed of 251 knots, reaching a top speed of 484 knots and a highest altitude of 22,025 feet. The flight burned an estimated 329 US gallons of fuel, producing about 3,165 kilograms of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 7,834 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 26 airports in 8 countries and flew about 29,183 nautical miles. The longest leg in that period was from Mar del Plata to Miami on October 29, covering 4,049 nautical miles. Over those 30 days, the aircraft made 30 flights, spent 76.0 hours in the air, and produced an estimated 306,766 kilograms of CO2. This was the third landing at Van Nuys in the tracked window of 39 flights between September 28 and November 6, 2026. The previous landing at Van Nuys was 29 days earlier, on October 9. The aircraft is based at Van Nuys Airport in California, and its most common destinations in that window were Teterboro, Miami, and Ottawa. Other tracked aircraft that landed at Van Nuys in the 24 hours before this landing included Goldman Sachs's Gulfstream G280, about 22 hours earlier, Travis Scott's Embraer E-190, about 4 hours earlier, MGM Resorts' Embraer Legacy 500, about 3 hours earlier, and Caesars' Gulfstream V, under an hour earlier.

Dr. Charles Huang is a Chinese-American investor and philanthropist based in Pasadena, California. He founded Pasaca Capital Inc., a Pasadena private-equity house, and Innova Medical Group, which became one of the world's largest distributors of rapid COVID tests. Through the Charles Huang Foundation he has given £50 million to the University of Strathclyde, $40 million to Wuhan University, and millions to hospitals in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Forbes China named him to its 100 Most Influential Chinese list in 2024. The aircraft's home base at Van Nuys is near Huang's business base in Pasadena, and the jet is managed by Pegasus Elite Aviation, a charter firm acquired by Huang's Prima Air Group in 2023, according to Aviation International News (ainonline.com).

This flight used 3 percent of the aircraft's range, a short hop for a jet built to cross oceans. N889KH remains at Van Nuys as of its last tracked position.

The flight departed from Las Vegas' longest runway, which is 14,835 feet long at an elevation of 2,181 feet. It landed at Van Nuys on a runway of 8,001 feet at 802 feet elevation. The aircraft burned about 420 US gallons of fuel per hour.

Before this trip, the jet had been on the ground at Las Vegas for about one hour after its previous tracked landing there on November 7.

Recent flights by the same owner included a November 6 trip from Hamilton to Teterboro covering 680 nautical miles in 2 hours 3 minutes, and a November 4 flight from Shannon to Hamilton of 2,675 nautical miles in 6 hours 1 minute. Other legs included Kenley to Shannon on November 4, Teterboro to Kenley on November 1, Fort Lauderdale to Teterboro on October 31, and a 9-minute, 9-nautical-mile hop from Miami to Miami on October 29.