Falcon 8X N822LC Flies 23 nm Hop From Boeing Field to Paine Field in 20 Minutes
Why It MattersShort repositioning hops show how ultra-long-range jets are flown well inside their design envelope, so per-trip emissions and fuel burn depend on how an owner uses the aircraft, not on its range.
What happened
Falcon 8X N822LC, associated with Charles Simonyi, flew a 23-nautical-mile leg (about 26 miles) from King County International Airport (Boeing Field) in Seattle to Paine Field on November 7. It departed at 19:47 UTC and touched down at 20:07 UTC, 20 minutes in the air. Top ground speed was 239 knots and the highest altitude 4,025 feet.
Estimated fuel burn was about 95 gallons, producing roughly 915 kg of CO2, comparable to driving a car 2,266 miles. The leg used only a small fraction of the Falcon 8X's 6,450 nm range. It was the aircraft's first tracked landing at Paine Field in the 30 days before November 7, and its home base is Boeing Field.
In the previous 30 days the jet made eight tracked flights totaling 17.2 hours in the air, visited six airports in one country and flew about 7,008 nm, producing an estimated 46,243 kg of CO2. Its longest leg in that period was a 2,066 nm trip from Ewing Township to Seattle on October 31. The most recent prior flight was Fairfield to Seattle on November 3, covering 562 nm in 1 hour 17 minutes.
Aircraft and registration
N822LC is a Falcon 8X, serial number 492, built in 2022, registered to Valkyrie 8X LLC of Seattle, an entity named for the aircraft type rather than the owner. The same entity pattern applied to Valkyrie 7X LLC, which held the Falcon 7X N786CS.
The FAA master record lists the aircraft as a Falcon 7X because Dassault certified the 8X as a derivative on the 7X type certificate. Flightradar24 and AirNav Radar report it under ICAO type FA8X. The Falcon 8X typically seats 12 to 16 passengers, cruises at Mach 0.90 and can fly at up to 51,000 feet.
Simonyi's background
Simonyi led the teams that built Microsoft Word and Excel after bringing WYSIWYG editing from Xerox PARC, where he wrote Bravo. He left Microsoft in 2002 to found Intentional Software, which Microsoft bought back in 2017.
He flew to the International Space Station as a spaceflight participant in April 2007 and March 2009, the only private citizen to make the trip twice. The Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences has given to the Institute for Advanced Study, the Seattle Symphony and the Charles Simonyi Endowment for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford.
Industry impact & what to watch
A 20-minute, 23 nm leg on an aircraft rated for 6,450 nm is a reminder that large-cabin jets are often used as point-to-point regional transport, with trip length set by the owner's schedule instead of by what the airframe can do. The emissions figures attached to such flights are therefore driven by utilisation, and a short hop and a transcontinental run on the same tail produce very different footprints.
The same tracking data shows the pattern across a month: one 2,066 nm leg and several shorter ones add up to 46,243 kg of CO2, with a 915 kg hop a small part of the total. For anyone assessing business-aviation sustainability claims, per-aircraft monthly totals say more than any single flight.
The registration detail is a second small lesson. Because the FAA lists the 8X under the 7X type certificate while tracking services use FA8X, the same airframe appears under two type labels, and data aggregated by type can split or merge fleets depending on the source.
