Melinda French Gates's Gulfstream G650ER flies Bologna to Newark in 8h 22m

Melinda French Gates's Gulfstream G650ER, tail number N459BL, landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 18:56 UTC. The aircraft departed Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Italy at 10:34 UTC. The flight took 8 hours and 22 minutes to complete the transatlantic crossing.

The aircraft used 48 percent of its range on this leg. Its top ground speed reached 544 knots. The departure airport, Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport, has a longest runway of 9,196 feet at an elevation of 123 feet. Newark Liberty International Airport has a longest runway of 11,000 feet at an elevation of 18 feet. The distance from the aircraft's home base at King County International Airport - Boeing Field to Newark is 2,081 nautical miles.

The great-circle distance between the two airports was 3,601 nautical miles, or 4,144 miles. The aircraft averaged a ground speed of 431 knots and reached a highest altitude of 43,025 feet. Our estimates show the flight burned about 3,931 US gallons of fuel, producing roughly 37,763 kilograms of CO2, about the same as driving a car 93,473 miles. The Gulfstream G650ER is an ultra-long range jet with a range of 7,500 nautical miles, a top speed of Mach 0.925, and a ceiling of 51,000 feet. It typically seats 12 passengers and can carry up to 19.

In the 30 days before this flight, the jet flew six flights totaling 33.1 hours in the air. Our estimate shows those flights produced about 149,251 kilograms of CO2. The longest leg in that period was Seattle to Bologna on October 23, 2026, covering 4,761 nautical miles. The most common destinations in that window were Seattle with five landings and Newark with four landings.

This was the fifth landing at Newark in the last 14 tracked flights for N459BL, and the first since October 10, 2026, 17 days earlier. The aircraft's home base is King County International Airport - Boeing Field in Seattle. In the 30 days before this flight, the jet visited five airports in three countries and flew about 15,233 nautical miles. Among other aircraft tracked at Newark in the 24 hours before this landing was a Gulfstream G280 operated by Aflac, which landed about 22 hours earlier.

Melinda French Gates resigned as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in June 2024 and took $12.5 billion from the settlement to fund her own initiatives. Her main vehicle is Pivotal Ventures, a Kirkland-based investment and incubation company she founded in 2015 that backs women's economic mobility, caregiving infrastructure, and political participation in the US. She has pledged $1 billion through 2026 to work on behalf of women and families. The aircraft is registered to TVPX Aircraft Solutions Inc as trustee, a structure that keeps the beneficial owner off the public registry, but the tie to Pivotal Ventures comes from the hangar and from who flies it.

N459BL is a 2018 Gulfstream G650ER with serial number 6321. It previously flew as N194WM under Bill Gates before being re-registered. The aircraft is based at Boeing Field in the Gates family hangar complex on the east side. Because the airframe and crew share history with the other G650ER, the two aircraft may appear at the same fields, a legacy of one household fleet split in two.

Recent flights by the same owner include a Newark-to-Seattle trip on October 12, 2026, lasting 4 hours and 53 minutes over 2,081 nautical miles. On October 10, 2026, the jet flew from London Stansted Airport in Essex to Newark in 7 hours and 14 minutes covering 3,020 nautical miles. Other flights in the past month included trips between San Jose and Seattle, and between Newark and Monticello.

The aircraft had been on the ground in Bologna for about four days before this flight. Its previous tracked landing was at Bologna on October 23, 2026, after a 9-hour 16-minute flight from Seattle.