George Lucas's Gulfstream G700 N138GL Flies Appleton to Chicago Midway in 40 Minutes
Why It MattersA large-cabin jet making a 152-nautical-mile hop shows how ultra-long-range aircraft are used on short regional legs, with the G700 using about 2 percent of its range.
N138GL, a 2025 Gulfstream G700, landed at Chicago Midway on October 27 after a short flight from Appleton, Wisconsin. The aircraft departed Appleton International Airport (KATW) at 04:38 UTC and touched down at 05:19 UTC. The great-circle distance is 152 nautical miles (175 miles). The jet averaged a ground speed of 226 knots, reached a top speed of 401 knots, burned about 324 gallons of fuel and produced an estimated 3,110 kilograms of CO2.
The aircraft is registered to SWR Services III LLC of Palo Alto and managed by Solairus Aviation, and is associated with Star Wars creator George Lucas. Its home base is San Francisco International Airport, 1,608 nautical miles from Chicago Midway. Chicago is not among the destinations on file for the aircraft, which include Miami-Opa Locka, Chino, Carlsbad, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Aspen.
The aircraft had been on the ground at Appleton for about 13 days. Its previous tracked flight was from Oakland to Appleton on October 14, a 3-hour 14-minute trip covering 1,565 nautical miles. This was the fifth tracked landing at Chicago in the window from August 11 to October 14, 2026; the previous Chicago landing was on October 13, 14 days earlier, on a Chicago-to-Oakland leg of 1,599 nautical miles, the longest in the period. Another tracked aircraft, a Gulfstream G450 registered to Dominion Energy, landed at Chicago about four hours earlier.
In the 30 days before this flight, the aircraft made eight flights totaling 14.7 hours in the air, visited five airports and flew about 6,086 nautical miles, producing about 67,984 kilograms of CO2. The most common destinations were Oakland (16 landings) and Van Nuys (11 landings). Recent flights by the same owner include Oakland to Van Nuys on October 9, Burbank to Oakland on October 6, and Oakland to Van Nuys on October 5.
The Gulfstream G700 has a range of 7,750 nautical miles, a top speed of Mach 0.935 and a ceiling of 51,000 feet, and burns about 480 US gallons of fuel per hour. It has the largest cabin in the Gulfstream line, with five living areas, and was certified in 2023. This short hop used only about 2 percent of the aircraft's range. Appleton's longest runway is 8,003 feet at an elevation of 918 feet; Chicago Midway's longest runway is 6,522 feet at 620 feet.
