Craig McCaw's Challenger 604 N222MC flies from La Rochelle to Teterboro in 8 hours 7 minutes

Craig McCaw's Bombardier Challenger 604, tail number N222MC, landed at Teterboro Airport (KTEB) in New Jersey on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at 21:41 UTC. The aircraft departed from La Rochelle Île de Ré Airport (LFBH) in France at 13:34 UTC, making the flight 8 hours and 7 minutes long. This was a transatlantic crossing from western France to the New York area.

The great-circle distance for this leg was 3,085 nautical miles, or 3,550 miles. The aircraft's average ground speed was 380 knots, and it reached a top ground speed of 499 knots. The highest altitude recorded was 32,025 feet. Based on our estimates, the flight burned about 2,275 US gallons of jet fuel, producing about 21,853 kg of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 54,092 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 aircraft is a 1996 model, serial number 5329. Its top speed is Mach 0.82, or 459 knots. The estimated fuel burn is 280 US gallons per hour. McCaw owns three other aircraft: a Cessna 208 Caravan, a 1965 de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, and a 2019 CubCrafters XCub.

This was the first landing at Teterboro by any of McCaw's aircraft in the tracked window from September 28 to November 3, 2026. The home base on file is King County International Airport - Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle, 2,080 nautical miles from Teterboro. 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 been on the ground at La Rochelle for about 21 hours before this flight, following a 1-hour-45-minute trip from Ängelholm on November 3. Other tracked aircraft that landed at Teterboro in the 24 hours before this landing included a Gulfstream V for Caesars, a Bombardier Global Express for Mark Wahlberg, a Gulfstream G550 for James Dolan, a Gulfstream G650 for Ronald Perelman, a Gulfstream G550 for Marc Anthony, and a Gulfstream IV SP for Alex Rodriguez.

In the 30 days before this flight, all four of McCaw's aircraft made 25 flights totaling 32.6 hours in the air. They visited 31 airports in five countries and flew about 10,934 nautical miles. The longest leg in that period was from Chicago/West Chicago to Caselle Torinese, Italy, on October 30, covering 5,340 nautical miles.

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 $11.5 billion. 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 in the New York area.

Before landing at La Rochelle, the Challenger 604 had flown from Olbia, Italy, to Ängelholm, Sweden, on November 2. That leg was 942 nautical miles and took 2 hours and 18 minutes. The aircraft then made a one-minute hop from Alghero to Olbia on October 31.

The flight used about 79 percent of the aircraft's range. The departure airport, La Rochelle Île de Ré Airport, has a longest runway of 7,398 feet at an elevation of 74 feet. The arrival airport, Teterboro Airport, has a longest runway of 6,997 feet at an elevation of 9 feet.