Google flies from Flagstaff to San Jose the week of the Moffett lease anniversary

Google flew from Flagstaff Pulliam Airport to San Jose International Airport on May 25th, a one-hour-and-thirty-minute hop in its Gulfstream G550, tail number N10XG. The flight arrived just before 1 a.m. local time, returning the aircraft to its base near the company’s Mountain View headquarters.

The same week marks the anniversary of Google’s controversial 60-year, $1.16 billion lease of NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield, a deal that gave the company exclusive access to Hangar One and the airfield. As the Tech Transparency Project has documented, only 155 of more than 1,000 flights from the field between 2007 and 2014 were classified as science missions, despite the lease’s requirement for scientific equipment. The flight from Flagstaff—a city known as a gateway to the Grand Canyon—suggests a quick personal or executive trip before returning to the office.

This is not an unusual pattern for N10XG. The aircraft has logged frequent short-haul flights from San Jose to destinations like Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and Las Vegas over the past year, often returning the same day or next. The jet’s owner, Google parent Alphabet, has not commented on the purpose of this particular trip.