Larry Ellison's Citation CJ4 lands in Los Angeles as Warner Bros. Discovery deal looms

Larry Ellison's Cessna Citation CJ4, tail number N417C, was tracked departing Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport shortly after midnight on September 9, 2026, and arriving at Los Angeles International Airport 61 minutes later, at an altitude of 31,000 feet and a peak ground speed of 437 knots. As always with Celebplanes, the aircraft's transponder broadcasts the plane's position, not its occupants.

If Larry Ellison was aboard, he would have landed in Los Angeles the same week his son David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, is reportedly finalizing a definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for an enterprise value of roughly $110 billion, as covered by 24/7 Wall St. in July 2026. The deal, structured as $31.00 per share in cash, would create a media conglomerate valued at over $200 billion, uniting Paramount's film and television library with Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO, CNN, and studio assets. Per CNBC's reporting in September 2025, Larry Ellison has backed his son's media ambitions, borrowing heavily against his Oracle shares — 277 million shares, worth over $82 billion at the time — to finance acquisitions and maintain control.

The flight pattern leading up to this trip suggests a working visit. In the week prior, N417C cycled between San Jose, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach, with a notable detour on September 2 to Lanai, the Hawaiian island Larry Ellison owns in its entirety. The aircraft returned from Lanai to Los Angeles the same day, then hopped to San Jose on September 4 before today's repositioning to LAX. This is consistent with Larry Ellison's known operational habits: he maintains a fleet of three jets — including a Gulfstream G650 and Bombardier Global Express — and his 71 trackable flights in 2025 show a heavy bias toward Florida and California, with only rare appearances in Hawaii, per Celebplanes data.

The timing of this Los Angeles arrival also coincides with ongoing negotiations for Oracle's participation in a consortium to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations, a deal in which Larry Ellison's personal stake has been reported by CNBC. While no owned vessel tracked by our partner site celebyachts.com — the 88-meter motor yacht Musashi — was near the arrival airport (its last AIS fix 20 hours ago placed it off the US East Coast), the travel rhythm points to a coast-to-coast work sprint: Palm Beach to Santa Monica, then to San Jose and back to LA. Should Larry Ellison have been on today's flight, he would arrive in a city where his son's biggest transaction yet is being hammered out, and where his own company's role in a separate tech-media merger remains unresolved. A quiet landing, but the local calendar is anything but.

For a billionaire who filed his declaration of domicile in Manalapan, Florida in May 2023 — a 16-acre estate 20 minutes from Mar-a-Lago, saving an estimated $1 billion in Hawaii state taxes — and who now controls roughly 50% of Paramount Skydance, this is the kind of trip that the aircraft logs don't have to explain. But if the plane's stops are any guide, Los Angeles is where the media empire takes shape.