Charles Simonyi's Falcon 8X lands at Van Nuys after 24-minute hop from Ontario

Charles Simonyi's Dassault Falcon 8X, tail number N822LC, flew from Ontario International Airport (KONT) to Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) on Friday, October 23, 2026. The flight departed at 02:29 UTC and touched down at 02:53 UTC, spending just 24 minutes in the air. The great-circle distance between the two Southern California airports is 47 nautical miles, or about 54 miles.

The 47 nm leg used about 1 percent of the aircraft's 6,450 nm range. The Falcon 8X reached a top ground speed of 282 knots and a highest altitude of 7,950 feet. Our estimate puts fuel burn at about 113 gallons, producing roughly 1,087 kg of CO2, comparable to driving a car 2,691 miles. The Falcon 8X typically seats 12 to 16 passengers, cruises at Mach 0.90, and can fly at up to 51,000 feet.

This was the first tracked landing at Van Nuys for N822LC in the 30-day window before October 23. The aircraft had been on the ground at Ontario for about one hour before departing. Its home base is King County International Airport (Boeing Field) in Seattle. In the previous 30 days, the jet visited four airports in one country, flying about 1,247 nm total. The longest leg in that period was a 610 nm trip from Seattle to San Jose on October 22.

The Falcon 8X burned an estimated 280 US gallons of fuel per hour. The average ground speed for this flight was 116 knots. Ontario International Airport has a longest runway of 12,197 feet at an elevation of 944 feet. Van Nuys Airport's longest runway is 8,001 feet at 802 feet elevation.

Charles Simonyi led the teams that built Microsoft Word and Excel after bringing WYSIWYG editing with him from Xerox PARC, where he wrote Bravo. He left Microsoft in 2002 to found Intentional Software, which Microsoft bought back in 2017. He flew to the International Space Station as a spaceflight participant twice, in April 2007 and again in March 2009, the only private citizen to make the trip twice. The Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences has given to the Institute for Advanced Study, the Seattle Symphony, and the Charles Simonyi Endowment for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. N822LC is registered to Valkyrie 8X LLC of Seattle, an entity named for the aircraft type rather than the owner, a deliberate privacy pattern.

The aircraft is a Falcon 8X, serial number 492, built in 2022. The FAA master record lists it as a Falcon 7X because Dassault certified the 8X as a derivative on the 7X type certificate, but Flightradar24 and AirNav Radar both report it under the ICAO type FA8X. Valkyrie 8X LLC holds this jet the way Valkyrie 7X LLC held the Falcon 7X N786CS before it. The home base remains Boeing Field in Seattle.

In the 30 days before this flight, the aircraft made three tracked flights totaling 4.9 hours in the air. Those flights produced an estimated 13,289 kg of CO2. The most recent prior flight was from San Jose to Ontario on October 23, covering 290 nautical miles in 58 minutes. On October 6, the jet flew from Boise to Seattle, a 347 nm leg lasting 2 hours 17 minutes.

It used a small fraction of the Falcon 8X's long-range capability.