Google aircraft lands in San Jose after a brief hop from Porter Ranch

Google's Gulfstream G550 (N10XG) was tracked flying a short 30-minute hop from Porter Ranch Airport (US-6972) to Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport on June 27th, arriving at 19:23 UTC. The aircraft, which is one of two Gulfstream G550s in Google's corporate fleet registered to subsidiary Planetary Ventures, climbed to 36,000 feet and reached a ground speed of 434.7 knots during the brief journey.

If Google executives were aboard, the aircraft would have returned to the Bay Area the same week that news emerged of a controversial 60-year, $1.16 billion lease extension for Moffett Federal Airfield, which Planetary Ventures secured from NASA in 2014. The arrangement, which grants Google access to the airfield less than four miles from its Mountain View headquarters, has drawn scrutiny from watchdog groups — the Tech Transparency Project has noted that only 155 of more than 1,000 flights from Moffett were used for the scientific missions stipulated in the original deal [techtransparencyproject.org](https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/fighter-jet-and-friends-congress-how-google-got-access-nasa-airfield). The timing of this brief flight, while unremarkable in distance, coincides with renewed public focus on the terms of that lease, which granted a subsidiary of one of the world's largest tech companies exclusive use of a federal airfield at below-market rates.