Peter Thiel's Gulfstream V N878DB flies from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 52 minutes

Peter Thiel's Gulfstream V, tail number N878DB, flew from Los Angeles International Airport to Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Sunday, October 25, 2026. The aircraft departed Los Angeles at 01:40 UTC and landed in Las Vegas at 02:32 UTC, spending 52 minutes in the air. The flight covered a great-circle distance of 205 nm, or 236 miles.

The Gulfstream V, built in 2007 and registered through Thorondor LLC, is an ultra long range jet with a top speed of Mach 0.885 and a ceiling of 51,000 feet. On this trip, the aircraft reached a highest altitude of 25,025 feet and a top ground speed of 456 knots. The flight burned an estimated 354 US gallons of jet fuel, producing about 3,398 kg of CO2, roughly the same as driving a car 8,411 miles. The aircraft is designed to carry up to 16 passengers over 6,675 nm.

This is the first tracked landing at Las Vegas for N878DB in the window from July 1 to October 23, 2026. The aircraft's home base is Los Angeles International Airport, and its usual destinations include Lihue, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Teterboro, Savannah, and Puerto Vallarta. In the 30 days before this flight, the aircraft visited eight airports in one country, flew about 14,121 nm, and completed 12 flights totaling 33.6 hours in the air. The most recent flights included a hop from Oakland to Los Angeles on October 23, a cross-country from Teterboro to Oakland on October 22, and a short 20-minute leg from San Jose to San Francisco on October 19.

Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies, and a partner at Founders Fund, with a net worth of about $27.5 billion. He has a home base in Los Angeles and a reported $12 million mansion in Buenos Aires. Las Vegas is a hub for technology conferences and investment events, and Thiel's venture capital firm Founders Fund has backed numerous startups that may have ties to the area. (privjet.net) shows the aircraft's recent flights, but no public events or meetings involving Thiel were scheduled in Las Vegas on this date.

The aircraft returned to Los Angeles after the short trip, continuing a pattern of West Coast shuttles that has included multiple flights between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose in recent weeks. The Gulfstream V remains active after being parked in Colorado since late 2024.

The aircraft's average ground speed on this leg was 238 knots. The flight used about 3 percent of the Gulfstream V's total range. The plane had been on the ground for about 43 hours before departing, following its previous tracked landing at Los Angeles on October 23.

In the tracking window from July 1 to October 23, 2026, the aircraft completed 40 tracked flights. Its most common destinations in that period were Los Angeles with 15 landings, San Francisco with 7 landings, and Honolulu on the island of Oahu with 5 landings. The longest leg in the 30 days before this flight was San Francisco to Teterboro on October 21, covering 2,226 nautical miles.