Rory McIlroy flies home from Philadelphia after a PGA Championship scouting trip

Rory McIlroy flew from Philadelphia Seaplane Base to Palm Beach International late Sunday, May 17, arriving just before 10:11 p.m. local time after a two-hour, three-minute hop in his Gulfstream G650ER, N1989R. The short flight capped a day that likely included final preparations ahead of a major championship week.

McIlroy is in Philadelphia this week for the 108th PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, the season's second major, where he will try to become the first player since 1960 to win the Masters and PGA Championship in the same year. He made an advance scouting trip to Aronimink two weeks ago, flying up on a Friday for five hours on the course before returning home that same day, per the Philadelphia Inquirer. That strategy, borrowed from Jack Nicklaus, has served him well before: he used a similar early visit to win the 2011 U.S. Open.

The late-night return to Palm Beach is consistent with McIlroy's pattern of maximizing family time between tournaments. After winning his second consecutive Masters in April, he told reporters he would drop his daughter at school, fly to Augusta for practice, and be home for dinner — a routine made possible by his Gulfstream's roughly one-hour flight time from West Palm Beach to Augusta, as detailed by the Palm Beach Daily News.