Craig McCaw's Challenger 604 N222MC flies from Alghero to Olbia in 1 minute

Craig McCaw's Bombardier Challenger 604, tail number N222MC, landed at Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport (LIEO) in Italy on Saturday, October 31, 2026, at 09:43 UTC. The aircraft departed from Alghero-Fertilia Airport (LIEA) at 09:41 UTC, making the flight 1 minute long.

The great-circle distance for this leg was 20 nautical miles, or 23 miles. The aircraft's average ground speed was 268 knots, and it reached a top ground speed of 268 knots. The highest altitude recorded was 8,150 feet. Based on our estimates, the flight burned about 6 US gallons of jet fuel, producing about 58 kg of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 142 miles. The Challenger 604 is a large-cabin jet with a range of 3,900 nautical miles, a ceiling of 41,000 feet, and seating for up to 12 passengers.

The flight used about 1 percent of the aircraft's range. The departure airport, Alghero-Fertilia Airport, has a longest runway of 9,843 feet and sits at 87 feet elevation. The arrival airport, Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport, has a longest runway of 9,006 feet and sits at 37 feet elevation.

This was the first landing at Olbia by any of McCaw's aircraft in the tracked window. The home base on file is King County International Airport - Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle, 4,911 nautical miles from Olbia. 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. The aircraft had arrived in Italy the day before, landing at Caselle Torinese (TO) on October 30 after a 5,340-nautical-mile flight from Chicago/West Chicago. That was the longest leg in the 30 days before this flight.

In the tracked window from September 28 to October 30, 2026, all four of McCaw's aircraft made 33 flights. The most common destinations were Santa Barbara with five landings, Victoria with three landings, and Seattle with two landings. Before this flight, the aircraft had spent about zero hours on the ground after its previous landing at Caselle Torinese.

Craig McCaw, born 1949 in Centralia, was the second of J. Elroy McCaw's four sons and inherited a small cable system when his father died in 1969. He spent the 1980s buying cellular licences nobody else wanted and assembled them into McCaw Cellular Communications, which AT&T bought in 1994 for $11.5B. He then took a controlling stake in Nextel in 1995, co-founded the Teledesic satellite venture with Bill Gates in 1994, built NEXTLINK/XO Communications, and founded Clearwire in 2004. He runs Eagle River Inc. and co-chairs Pendrell. No news reports link this specific flight to any business meeting or personal event.

McCaw's other aircraft include a 2001 Cessna 208 Caravan, a 1965 de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, and a 2019 CubCrafters XCub. The Challenger 604 has a top speed of Mach 0.82, or 459 knots. It burns about 280 US gallons of fuel per hour.

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 between airports in the Pacific Northwest and, recently, in Europe.