Elon Musk arrives in Los Angeles ahead of SpaceX Starship review milestone

Elon Musk flew from Memphis to Hawthorne, California, aboard the Gulfstream G550 N272BG on a three-hour-twenty-minute red-eye landing at 6:41 AM UTC. The flight originates at FedEx's Memphis hub and arrives at Jack Northrop Field, the airport adjacent to SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne.

The same week, per Spaceflight Now, SpaceX is conducting a Starship Flight 9 vehicle readiness review at its McGregor, Texas, test facility and preparing the launch tower at Boca Chica for an upcoming orbital attempt. While Musk's primary residence remains a Starbase-adjacent rental in Texas, Hawthorne serves as the operational nerve center for the company’s engineering and regulatory work on the Starship program.

Recent flight patterns show Elon Musk made several hops between the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California before this Memphis-Hawthorne leg, suggesting a week of meetings across SpaceX's California footprint. The Hawthorne arrival follows a series of short-duration flights that align with a schedule typical of board-level reviews and program milestone briefings at SpaceX's main campus.