Vinod Khosla's Challenger 604 lands at Oakland after a one-minute hop

Vinod Khosla's Bombardier Challenger 604, tail number N604SB, was tracked departing Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (KOAK) at 21:58 UTC on Sunday, October 18, 2026, and arriving back at the same airport one minute later, according to public ADS-B data collected by Celebplanes. The aircraft reached a top ground speed of 66 knots and a highest altitude of negative 25 feet, consistent with a ground movement or a very short repositioning hop rather than a passenger-carrying flight. Celebplanes tracks the registered aircraft, not the individuals who may be aboard; whether Vinod Khosla was on this flight is unknown.

The flight covered no measurable distance, with a time in the air of one minute. The Bombardier Challenger 604 is a large-cabin business jet with a range of 3,900 nautical miles, a top speed of Mach 0.82 (459 knots), and a service ceiling of 41,000 feet. It typically seats nine to twelve passengers. Celebplanes estimates the flight burned about three US gallons of fuel, producing roughly 29 kilograms of CO2, about the same as driving a car 72 miles.

This is the third tracked movement of N604SB on October 18, following an eight-minute hop from Mountain View to Oakland and a 29-minute circuit from Oakland to Oakland earlier in the day. In the 30 days before this flight, all of Vinod Khosla's aircraft made 13 landings at Oakland, the most common destination in that window, followed by Seattle and Teterboro with five landings each. Vinod Khosla's home base on file is Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (KSJC), 26 nautical miles from Oakland. Usual destinations include Boeing Field in Seattle, Aspen, Austin, and London Heathrow.

Vinod Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and founded Khosla Ventures in 2004. He is a major early investor in OpenAI and lives in Portola Valley, California. In September 2026, Vinod, his wife Neeru, and their son Neal Khosla closed on the purchase of the Seattle Seahawks from the Paul G. Allen estate for $9.612 billion, the highest price ever paid for an NFL team. Both of Khosla's jets, N604SB and N85NV, were at Boeing Field for the Seahawks' home win over the Chargers earlier this season.

The one-minute hop from Oakland to Oakland is a routine ground movement, likely a repositioning or a maintenance taxi. It adds little to the flight log of a busy fleet that has flown 28 flights in the last 30 days, covering about 72 hours in the air.

Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport has a longest runway of 10,520 feet at an elevation of 9 feet. The Bombardier Challenger 604 typically seats nine passengers, up to 12. The aircraft burns an estimated 280 US gallons of fuel per hour.

Other recent flights by the same owner include a Denver to Oakland hop on October 16 by the Gulfstream V in 1 hour 59 minutes, and a Seattle to Oakland flight on October 12 by the same aircraft in 1 hour 27 minutes.