Craig McCaw's CubCrafters XCub N10TA flies from Bakersfield to Banning in 1 hour 23 minutes

Craig McCaw's CubCrafters XCub, tail number N10TA, landed at Banning Municipal Airport (KBNG) on Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 22:49 UTC. The aircraft departed from Meadows Field (KBFL) in Bakersfield at 21:26 UTC, making the flight 1 hour and 23 minutes long. This was a 136-nautical-mile trip between the two airports in Southern California.

The great-circle distance for this leg was 136 nm, or 157 miles. The aircraft's average ground speed was 98 knots, and it reached a top ground speed of 122 knots. The highest altitude recorded was 7,425 feet. Based on our estimates, the flight burned about 14 US gallons of fuel, producing about 133 kg of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 330 miles. The CubCrafters XCub is a 2019 bush plane, serial CCX-2000-0080, with a top speed of about 140 knots and a range of around 800 nautical miles. It seats up to two passengers.

This was the first landing at Banning by any of McCaw's aircraft in the tracked window. The home base on file for McCaw's aircraft is King County International Airport - Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle, 853 nm from Banning. Other usual destinations include Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey, Jackson Hole Airport, Palm Springs International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, and Juneau International Airport. In the 30 days before this flight, all four of McCaw's aircraft made 28 flights, totaling 33.0 hours in the air. The most common destinations were Santa Barbara, with 5 landings; Victoria, with 2 landings; and Seattle, with 2 landings.

Craig McCaw is a Pacific Northwest businessman who built McCaw Cellular Communications and sold it to AT&T in 1994 for $11.5 billion. He later led Nextel, co-founded Teledesic with Bill Gates, and founded Clearwire. He runs Eagle River Inc. and co-chairs Pendrell. McCaw's business interests have long been based around Carillon Point in Kirkland, Washington. Banning is not known to be a hub for his companies, and no scheduled public appearance or corporate event tied to McCaw was found near the airport.

The aircraft is registered to Flight Management LLC in Kirkland, Washington, not to McCaw personally. The 'MC' tail numbers on his four aircraft align with that address, but no filing or news report confirms the ownership. The flight is part of a pattern of short hops in California in recent days. The XCub remains at Banning as of this report.

Banning Municipal Airport has a longest runway of 4,955 feet at an elevation of 2,219 feet. By contrast, Meadows Field in Bakersfield has a longest runway of 10,849 feet at 510 feet elevation. The XCub is one of four aircraft registered to Flight Management LLC in Kirkland. The others are a 1996 Bombardier Challenger 604, a 2001 Cessna 208 Caravan, and a 1965 de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver.

Before landing at Banning, the XCub had been on the ground for about two hours after a previous landing at Corcoran on the same day. That day alone, the XCub made six other short hops: from Kerman to Corcoran, Chowchilla to Madera, Stockton to Merced, Corning to Orland, Redding to Cottonwood, and Redding to Redding. The longest leg by any of McCaw's aircraft in the prior 30 days was a 4,070-nautical-mile flight from Farnborough, Hampshire, to Abbotsford on September 30, 2026, flown by the Challenger 604.