Elon Musk returns to the Bay Area the week an OpenAI verdict lands against him

Elon Musk flew from Hawthorne, California, to Moffett Federal Airfield on Wednesday, May 20, a 46-minute hop aboard his Gulfstream G550 N272BG. The flight arrived just after 8:39 a.m. local time, placing him in the heart of the Bay Area.

His arrival comes just two days after a federal jury in Oakland ruled against Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, per a CNBC report on May 18. The jury found that Musk had filed his claims outside the three-year statute of limitations, a verdict Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately adopted. Musk called the decision a “calendar technicality” on X and said he would appeal. The trial, held at the Ronald V. Dellums federal courthouse a few miles north of Moffett, occupied much of May and featured three days of Musk’s own testimony in late April.

The trip is a familiar one: Musk’s fleet has visited the Bay Area repeatedly during the trial. Recent flights show his aircraft landing at KNUQ or KSJC on May 18, May 19, and May 20, often shuttling between Austin, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. With the verdict now in hand, the short hop from Hawthorne—a few miles from SpaceX’s headquarters—may signal legal strategy meetings or simply the need to be within recall range, a condition the judge left ambiguous, as NBC News noted on May 13.