Larry Ellison's Cessna Citation lands in Santa Monica the night before Paramount's Warner Bros. bid deadline

Larry Ellison's Cessna Citation CJ4, tail N417C, was tracked departing Santa Ynez Airport in California's wine country shortly after 5 p.m. local time on August 16, touching down at Santa Monica Municipal Airport 27 minutes later. The brief coastal hop — barely long enough for a drink service — places the aircraft within a five-mile radius of the Century City offices where Paramount Skydance executives are understood to be finalizing paperwork.

If aboard, Larry Ellison would arrive the night before Paramount's Warner Bros. Discovery bid deadline, reported as Monday by recentlyheard.com. The hostile takeover, backed by Larry Ellison's reported $40 billion personal guarantee, pits the Ellison family against Netflix's all-cash offer, with the Department of Justice reviewing both proposals. Van Nuys is the usual Los Angeles touchdown for this fleet — Santa Monica is closer to Beverly Hills boardrooms and the sort of off-calendar meetings that precede Monday morning announcements.

The aircraft's recent movements tell a story of sustained West Coast presence: N417C was tracked shuttling between Santa Monica, San Diego, San Jose, and Santa Ynez six times in the past week alone. Three of those hops were on August 14 — a busy day that saw the Citation cross Los Angeles basin airspace twice in as many hours, consistent with a principal moving between meetings rather than sightseeing. records show Larry Ellison's fleet of three aircraft has flown 71 trackable trips in 2025, with 50 originating or ending in Florida — but August has swung hard toward California.

This is not a man who needs to be in one place. Larry Ellison — co-founder and CTO of Oracle, controlling shareholder of Paramount Skydance, owner of 98% of Lanai and a $277 million Palm Beach resort — maintains homes or stakes from Manalapan to Silicon Valley. His Gulfstream G650, N817GS, usually handles the cross-country leg, as it did on May 20 when it flew Palm Beach to Van Nuys in four hours 40 minutes, arriving as the Warner Bros. bid was first circulating. reported that trip coincided with early-stage negotiations; the August 16 hop lands the smaller jet at the business end of the runway, literally and otherwise.

Santa Monica Municipal Airport — KSMO — is a curious choice for a man whose Gulfstream typically clears customs at Van Nuys. The CJ4 is exempt from the jet ban that limits larger aircraft at Santa Monica; its 27-minute airborne time suggests a connection flight from a longer trip, or simply a preference for landing close to the Century City corridor where the Warner Bros. deal will either close or collapse by Monday. Either way, the aircraft has arrived. What happens next is a matter for the boardroom, not the radar.