In 2020, a 19-year-old college student named Jack Sweeney built a Twitter bot that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet using publicly available flight data and posted its location in real time. Musk noticed. He sent Sweeney a direct message offering $5,000 to take the account down, citing security concerns. Sweeney countered with $50,000, or a Tesla Model 3. Musk went quiet. Two years later, Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter. Among his first acts as owner: banning the account, suspending all 30 of Sweeney’s associated profiles, threatening a lawsuit, and temporarily suspending the journalists who reported on the ban. The @ElonJet saga is the defining story of celebrity private jet culture in the modern era, and it all started with a single Gulfstream tail number: N628TS.
Unlike most celebrities who own one aircraft and call it a day, Elon Musk operates a four-jet fleet registered to Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked entity based in Hawthorne, California. The flagship is a Gulfstream G650ER (N628TS), the long-range ultra-capable workhorse that flew 355 times in 2024 alone. Alongside it sit two Gulfstream G550s used for SpaceX employee transport and regional hops. And in 2025, the fleet gained its most capable member yet: a brand-new Gulfstream G800, registered N8628, one of fewer than 20 delivered worldwide at the time of its acquisition.
This guide covers every aircraft in Elon Musk’s private jet fleet, the complete origin story of how he built one of the most scrutinized aviation operations on the planet, the carbon data behind those 355 annual flights, and the famous trips that made N628TS the most tracked tail number in business aviation history.
Quick facts about Elon Musk’s private jet fleet
Elon Musk’s Complete Private Jet Fleet
Musk’s fleet spans over two decades of acquisitions, from his first Gulfstream G550 purchased in 2003 through the brand-new G800 delivered in 2025. All aircraft are registered to Falcon Landing LLC, a holding entity tied to SpaceX and based in Hawthorne, California. The G650ER (N628TS) is his primary long-haul aircraft and the one most tracked by aviation enthusiasts and journalists alike.
The Origin Story: How Elon Musk Built a Four-Jet Fleet
Musk’s relationship with private aviation began at the same moment he started building rockets, and the two have grown in parallel ever since. What began as a single mid-cabin jet for business travel became a four-aircraft operation that mirrors the scale of his corporate empire.
2003
First jet purchase: Gulfstream G550 N502SX. In the same year SpaceX was founded, Musk acquires his first private aircraft, a Gulfstream G550 registered N502SX. The jet, priced at approximately $50 million new, becomes his primary means of connecting Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington as Tesla and SpaceX begin demanding simultaneous attention across multiple cities.
2007
Second G550 added: N272BG. As travel demands expand across Tesla, SpaceX, and his other ventures, Musk adds a second Gulfstream G550 (N272BG) to the fleet. Both aircraft are held through Falcon Landing LLC and serve as workhorses for regional and secondary travel that continues today.
April 2016
Gulfstream G650ER N628TS delivered. Musk takes delivery of a brand-new Gulfstream G650ER, registered N628TS, for approximately $70 million. The tail number encodes his birthday: “628” references June 28. The G650ER becomes his primary long-haul aircraft and the jet that will define his public aviation identity for the next decade.
November 2020
@ElonJet launches. Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student, builds an automated Twitter bot that uses public FAA and flight tracking data to post the real-time location of N628TS. The account grows rapidly and is eventually followed by hundreds of thousands of people.
January 2022
Musk DMs Sweeney, offers $5,000. Musk sends Sweeney a direct message on Twitter asking him to take down @ElonJet, citing personal security concerns. He offers $5,000. Sweeney replies asking for $50,000 or a Tesla Model 3. Musk stops responding. The conversation is later published publicly by Sweeney.
December 2022
Twitter acquired; @ElonJet banned within weeks. Musk completes his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. On December 14, citing a stalking incident involving his son, he suspends @ElonJet and all 30 of Sweeney’s Twitter accounts. Journalists who report on the ban are also suspended, triggering a fresh wave of international coverage. Musk announces legal action against Sweeney. The @ElonJet controversy becomes one of the defining stories of his Twitter ownership.
2023
Fleet logs 456 flights. Musk’s jets hit their highest recorded annual flight count. The fleet connects SpaceX Starbase in Brownsville, Tesla Gigafactories in Austin and Berlin, Neuralink facilities, and political destinations as Musk’s public profile in US politics expands significantly.
2024
355 flights, ~$2.5M in fuel, ~4,000 metric tons CO2. The fleet burns approximately $2.5 million worth of aviation fuel across 355 flights. Key destinations include SpaceX sites in Hawthorne and Brownsville, Tesla Austin, and a string of political stops tied to Musk’s involvement in Trump’s presidential campaign, including 13 trips to swing states and 31 post-election flights to Palm Beach.
Early 2025
Gulfstream G800 N8628 delivered. Musk takes delivery of a brand-new Gulfstream G800, registered N8628, among the first examples of the type delivered worldwide. The tail number again encodes his June 28 birthday in rearranged form. The G800 extends the fleet’s maximum range to 8,200 nautical miles and becomes the most capable aircraft Musk has ever owned.
Inside the Gulfstream G650ER: The Jet That Started It All
When Musk took delivery of N628TS in April 2016, the Gulfstream G650ER was widely considered the finest purpose-built business aircraft in the world. It remains formidable: a range of 7,500 nautical miles at Mach 0.85, a maximum speed of Mach 0.925, and a cabin wide enough to configure with a private stateroom, divan seating, and a full galley. The jet is powered by two Rolls-Royce BR725 engines, each producing 16,900 pounds of thrust, giving the aircraft both the performance to climb rapidly above commercial traffic and the efficiency to sustain those ultra-long-range routes that define Musk’s travel pattern.
The G650ER’s “extended range” designation adds approximately 500 nautical miles over the standard G650 through a modified fuel system, a meaningful advantage for the kind of transatlantic and transpacific routing Musk’s schedule demands. In 2024 alone, N628TS logged 126 flights, accumulated over 300 flight hours, and consumed more than 150,000 gallons of aviation fuel, generating approximately 1,500 metric tons of CO2 on its own, before accounting for the rest of the fleet.
Performance
Cabin
Ownership
What does N628TS mean?
The tail number N628TS encodes Musk’s birthday: June 28, written as 6/28. The “TS” suffix is widely interpreted as referencing Tesla and SpaceX, the two companies that dominate his travel schedule. His newer Gulfstream G800 carries the registration N8628, rearranging the same birthday digits in a slightly different form. Musk’s deliberate use of these numbers across his aircraft registrations is consistent with how he uses tail numbers as a low-key personal signature, one that aviation enthusiasts quickly learned to recognize.
The Newest Jet: Gulfstream G800
In early 2025, Musk took delivery of a Gulfstream G800, registered N8628, placing him among the first owners of an aircraft type that had only just entered commercial production. The G800 extends the Gulfstream family’s capabilities significantly: 8,200 nautical miles of range (700 more than the G650ER), a top speed of Mach 0.935, and a cabin Gulfstream describes as five living areas, including a grand suite with shower. The engines are Rolls-Royce Pearl 700 turbofans, the same powerplant developed for the G700 that preceded it in the product lineup.
The G800 is priced at approximately $75 million new, and at the time of Musk’s delivery, fewer than 20 examples had been delivered globally. It is the highest-spec aircraft Musk has owned to date, and its range capability means it can fly nonstop from his Austin base to virtually any destination on earth, a meaningful upgrade even over the already impressive G650ER.
The ElonJet Controversy: When Tracking a Jet Changed the Internet
No private jet in history has generated more public attention than N628TS, and it is largely because of one college student with a laptop and a public API. Jack Sweeney launched @ElonJet on Twitter in November 2020 using freely available flight tracking data from the FAA and ADS-B receivers worldwide. The account was simple: it posted automated updates whenever N628TS took off or landed, showing departure airport, destination, and flight time. It grew to hundreds of thousands of followers.
The $5,000 DM
In January 2022, Elon Musk sent Jack Sweeney a direct message on Twitter: he wanted the @ElonJet account taken down, citing security concerns and the risk of being “shot by a nutcase.” He offered $5,000. Sweeney, then 19, replied asking for $50,000, or alternatively a Tesla Model 3. Musk stopped responding. Sweeney published the conversation. The exchange became one of the most discussed DM threads in social media history and set the stage for the more dramatic confrontation that followed when Musk bought the platform.
When Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, few expected the ElonJet saga to resurface so quickly. It took less than two months. On December 14, 2022, @ElonJet was suspended, along with all 30 of Sweeney’s associated accounts. Musk cited a specific incident in which he claimed a person who had been tracking the jet’s movements followed a car carrying his young son, mistaking it for Musk’s vehicle. He announced legal action against Sweeney. Separately, Twitter suspended a group of journalists who had reported on the account ban, a move that drew condemnation from press freedom organizations and created a new wave of international coverage of the story Musk was trying to suppress.
Sweeney responded by moving to other platforms, including Mastodon, and eventually rebuilt audience there. He later launched similar tracking accounts for other public figures. The legal threats against him, as of the last public reporting, had not resulted in filed lawsuits. The episode remains a landmark case in the tension between publicly available flight data, privacy expectations of the ultra-wealthy, and the power of platform owners to enforce their own preferences.
Carbon Emissions: A Fleet-Level Problem
Elon Musk’s fleet is not just unusual for its size. It is unusual for what it emits. In 2024, the combined operations of his jets consumed approximately $2.5 million worth of aviation fuel and generated close to 4,000 metric tons of CO2. That figure is roughly 250 times what the average American produces from all sources in an entire year. The G650ER alone accounted for an estimated 1,500 metric tons of that total in 2024, from 126 flights and over 300 hours in the air.
Estimated CO2 emissions, 2024. Musk figure covers full fleet (G650ER, two G550s). Kylie Jenner figure per flight tracking data. Taylor Swift, who topped 2022 rankings at an estimated 8,293 metric tons, had data not comprehensively published for 2024.
The irony that the founder of Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle company, also operates one of the most carbon-intensive private aviation fleets among public figures has not gone unnoticed. Musk has not publicly addressed the contradiction directly, beyond occasional references to the operational necessity of traveling between his many businesses.
Elon Musk’s Most Famous Private Jet Moments
The SpaceX Starbase Express (Ongoing)
The single most-flown route in N628TS’s history is the corridor between Hawthorne, California (adjacent to SpaceX’s headquarters) and Brownsville, Texas (where SpaceX Starbase is located). Every major Starship test, launch, or milestone has been preceded and followed by Musk’s Gulfstream appearing on the Brownsville tarmac. Flight trackers note this route as the defining pattern of his travel log, a tight loop between the engineering base and the launch site that repeats dozens of times per year.
The Trump Campaign Circuit (2024)
In 2024, Musk’s jets made 13 documented trips to and from swing states as he campaigned publicly for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada appeared repeatedly in the flight logs. The political travel was tracked independently by multiple outlets, which cross-referenced ADS-B data with rally schedules and public appearances. It was one of the first times a celebrity or tech-industry figure’s jet data was used systematically as a tool for mapping political activity.
The Post-Election Palm Beach Commute (November to December 2024)
After Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024, Musk’s jet data told a clear story about where his attention was focused. His fleet made 31 flights to or from Palm Beach International Airport in 2024, with 25 of those 31 occurring after election day. The frequency of Palm Beach trips, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is located, was widely noted in political and aviation reporting as a real-time indicator of Musk’s proximity to the incoming administration.
Paris for the Olympics and Notre-Dame (2024)
Among Musk’s international flights in 2024, his trip to France stood out for combining two distinct events: the Paris Summer Olympics and the ceremonial reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral following its 2019 fire. The trip was part of a broader 2024 international schedule that included flights to Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and China, reflecting the global operational footprint of his companies alongside his increasingly prominent presence in geopolitical events.
Bali: The Starlink Indonesia Launch (2024)
Musk flew to Bali, Indonesia in 2024 for the formal launch of Starlink satellite internet services in the country, one of SpaceX’s most significant market expansions in Southeast Asia. The trip was a representative example of how his personal aircraft usage intersects directly with business development: a single long-haul flight connecting a major commercial partnership event with the rest of his global schedule, turning around quickly to return to the US.
How Elon Musk’s Fleet Compares to Other Billionaire Jets
Among tech industry billionaires, Musk’s four-aircraft fleet is in a category of its own. Jeff Bezos operates a Gulfstream G650ER as his primary jet, with a Boeing 767 serving as a secondary transport for larger party travel. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder, has operated multiple aircraft including a Gulfstream G650. None, however, have assembled a fleet of four currently active jets under a single holding entity with the combined utilization rate that Falcon Landing LLC logs.
In the broader celebrity landscape, Musk’s ~4,000 metric tons of annual CO2 from aviation represents one of the largest single-owner footprints on record for any year where comprehensive data is available. Taylor Swift topped the celebrity rankings in 2022 at an estimated 8,293 metric tons. Drake’s “Air Drake,” a converted Boeing 767, operates in a similar weight class as Musk’s fleet but with fewer annual flights. What makes Musk’s case distinctive is not any single extreme figure, but the sustained, year-over-year volume: 355 flights in 2024, 456 in 2023, with no public indication of any plans to reduce operations.
Where most celebrities who attract private jet scrutiny own one aircraft and find themselves in the news for a single controversial flight, Musk’s story is a decade-long accumulation of data, legal confrontations, and flight logs that have made N628TS the most documented tail number in modern private aviation.
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About the Author
Tim is the owner and editor-in-chief of AeroCorner, where he has spent the last seven years overseeing aviation content covering aircraft, airlines, airports, and the broader aviation industry. Through years of researching, editing, and publishing aviation-focused content, he has developed extensive practical knowledge of commercial aviation and air travel. Based in Asia and a frequent traveler himself, Tim also brings firsthand passenger experience to AeroCorner’s coverage. Outside of publishing, he has also explored aviation firsthand through hands-on flight training in New Zealand.