Elon Musk lands in Los Angeles after a stop near Memphis

Elon Musk flew from 3H Cattle Company Airport, a rural strip just south of Memphis, to Los Angeles in his Gulfstream G650ER (N628TS) early on June 20, touching down at 2:31 a.m. after a 32-minute hop from coordinates near the Tennessee-Mississippi line.

The timing is no coincidence. The U.S. Department of Justice, per Electrek’s reporting this week, asked a federal court on June 17 to toss a Clean Air Act lawsuit against xAI over dozens of unpermitted gas turbines running at its Colossus data centers near Memphis. The DOJ argued the pollution case touches “national, economic, and energy security.” Musk’s departure from the area came the same week his company xAI, now merged into SpaceX, also lost its trade secret suit against OpenAI with prejudice in San Francisco.

The Los Angeles arrival follows a pattern of cross-country hops: Musk flew from San Jose to LA on June 18, then back to Austin, then to Memphis on June 19 before slipping out before dawn. With legal fights on multiple fronts and a new SpaceX market cap above $2.8 trillion, the brief flight suggests a day’s work on the ground in the South before returning to the West Coast.