Jon Shirley's Falcon 7X Flies Paris to Everett in 10 Hours 22 Minutes
Why It MattersTracked private-jet flights now expose routing, fuel burn and emissions in public view, while managed-aircraft registrations place individually associated aircraft inside the operating and reporting framework of fleet managers.
What happened
A Falcon 7X linked to Jon Shirley, the former president, chief operating officer and director of Microsoft, flew from Paris to Everett in 10 hours and 22 minutes. The great-circle distance between the two airports is 4,324 nautical miles (4,976 miles). The aircraft averaged a ground speed of 417 knots, reached a top speed of 477 knots and climbed to a highest altitude of 43,025 feet.
The flight burned an estimated 2,593 US gallons of fuel, producing about 24.9 metric tons of CO2. It was the fourth landing at Everett in the tracked window of 11 flights since September 25, 2026. The previous Everett landing was on October 11, 2026, 13 days earlier. The aircraft is based at King County International Airport, Boeing Field (KBFI), about 23 nautical miles south of Everett.
The aircraft had spent about four days on the ground in Paris, where its previous tracked landing was on October 20, 2026. In the 30 days before this flight, it visited nine airports in three countries and flew about 14,247 nautical miles. The longest leg in that period was Everett to Venice on October 16, 2026.
The aircraft is registered to Executive Jet Management, NetJets' managed-aircraft arm. Its tail number, N74JK, appears to be a set of initials. The Falcon 7X is an ultra-long-range trijet with a range of 5,950 nautical miles and a ceiling of 51,000 feet. It has fly-by-wire controls, three living areas and an EASy cockpit, a top speed of Mach 0.90 (497 knots) and an estimated fuel burn of 250 US gallons per hour.
Who Shirley is
Shirley joined Microsoft in 1983, oversaw its 1986 initial public offering and the construction of the Redmond campus, and remained on the board until 2008. He lives in Medina, Washington.
He and his late wife Mary built a collection of modern art, including more than 40 works by Alexander Calder, which they donated to the Seattle Art Museum. He remarried in 2016 to Kim Richter Shirley, and the couple appears on the ARTnews Top 200 collectors list.
Industry impact & what to watch
The registration of N74JK to Executive Jet Management illustrates how managed-aircraft programs work in the segment: an individually associated aircraft sits inside a fleet manager's operating certificate, so its flying is operated and recorded through that manager. Published track data then makes the pattern of use visible — an Everett to Venice leg on October 16 and a Paris to Everett crossing nine days later within the same 30-day window.
The fuel and emissions figures show how an ultra-long-range trijet's economics scale with sector length. At an estimated 250 US gallons per hour, a 10-hour-22-minute crossing consumes 2,593 US gallons and about 24.9 metric tons of CO2, and a 30-day window carrying roughly 14,247 nautical miles of flying multiplies that exposure. As public flight tracking and CO2 estimates circulate for individual tail numbers, sustainability reporting for private aviation increasingly rests on this type of per-flight arithmetic.
The repeated Everett landings from a Boeing Field base, four in 11 tracked flights, show the aircraft using a facility about 23 nautical miles from home, a routing choice that is visible to anyone reading the same track data.
