Troy Aikman's Challenger 300 flies Santa Barbara to San Jose in 41 minutes

Troy Aikman's Bombardier Challenger 300, N8TA, departed Santa Barbara Municipal Airport at 22:39 UTC on Sunday, October 18, 2026 and landed at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport 41 minutes later at 23:20 UTC. The flight covered a great-circle distance of 203 nm at an average ground speed of 300 kt. The aircraft reached a highest altitude of 20,025 ft and a top ground speed of 426 kt.

The Challenger 300 has a top speed of Mach 0.83, or 470 knots. Its cabin is 930 cubic feet. The aircraft burns about 250 US gallons of fuel per hour.

The 203 nm trip used about 7 percent of the aircraft's 3,065 nm range. The Challenger 300 typically seats 8 passengers, up to 10, and has a ceiling of 45,000 ft. Our estimate puts fuel burned at about 169 US gallons and CO2 at about 1,624 kg, about the same as driving a car 4,019 miles. The aircraft is a 2009 model built by Bombardier.

Our tracking shows no earlier landings at San Jose in the 40 flights we tracked from June 3 to October 13, 2026. Aikman's home base is Dallas Love Field. His usual destinations include Chicago O'Hare, Miami International, Aspen-Pitkin County, Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, San Diego International and Charlotte Douglas. In the 30 days before this flight, N8TA visited 9 airports and flew about 7,943 nm. The longest leg in that period was Santa Barbara to Dallas on October 9, 1,152 nm. Another tracked aircraft, Rich Barton's Dassault Falcon 7X, landed at San Jose under an hour before N8TA.

Troy Aikman is a 3-time Super Bowl champion quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys and has been the lead analyst for ESPN's Monday Night Football since 2022. He is also an investor in Eight Elite Lager and Sirius XM. San Jose has no scheduled NFL game this week, and the city is not a known secondary residence for Aikman. No public appearance or business event tied to Aikman in the San Jose area was found in available web sources.

The flight from Santa Barbara to San Jose is a short coastal hop, similar in duration to Aikman's recent 30-minute flight from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on October 13. The aircraft had been on the ground in Santa Barbara for about 6 days before this trip.

Santa Barbara Municipal Airport has a longest runway of 6,037 feet at an elevation of 13 feet. Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport has a longest runway of 11,000 feet at an elevation of 62 feet. The distance from Dallas Love Field to San Jose is 1,258 nm.

In the 30 days before this flight, N8TA made 12 flights totaling 20.9 hours in the air. Our estimate puts CO2 for that period at about 50,114 kg. The most common destinations in that window were Dallas with 18 landings, Santa Barbara with 7, and Los Angeles with 2.

The next flight from San Jose will show whether this was a single stop or the start of a longer journey. The tracker will be watching.