Elon Musk flies from Perryville to Los Angeles the week of a SpaceX Starlink hearing

Elon Musk flew from Perryville Regional Airport in Missouri to an airport near Los Angeles on May 22, touching down after a 3-hour-30-minute flight in his Gulfstream G450, tail N450GG. The Missouri departure is unusual for Musk, whose fleet typically operates out of Austin, San Jose, or Brownsville.

The same week, a federal docket in Washington, D.C., shows a scheduled oral argument in a case brought by Dish Network challenging SpaceX's Starlink spectrum authorization — a proceeding Musk's legal team has been actively briefing. Per the court calendar, the Federal Communications Commission faces a filing deadline this week on the matter, which could affect Starlink's expanding satellite constellation.

The Los Angeles landing follows a pattern of recent flights by Musk's aircraft between SpaceX's Hawthorne headquarters and the West Coast. In the four days prior, Musk's Gulfstream G800 and G650ER made at least six trips shuttling between San Jose, Los Angeles, and Brownsville — the latter home to Starbase, where Starship testing has accelerated this month.