Inside Elon Musk’s US$70 million Gulfstream private jet – tracked by a college student’s Twitter bot, the Tesla CEO’s 19-seater G650ER is a favourite of tech billionaires, also used by Jeff Bezos

Feb 19 , 2022

Find out more about Elon Musk’s Gulfstream private jet worth US$70 million. Photos: AP, gulfstream.com

The SpaceX founder refuses to pay the pesky 19-year-old college student the US$50,000 he wants to remove the Twitter bot tracking his jet for all the world to see

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also favours Gulfstream’s G650ER, the brand’s largest business jet with a range of 8,600 miles, panoramic windows and chairs that recline into beds

Elon Musk’s private jet has been grabbing headlines in the last week or so since the Twitter drama broke out between the billionaire Tesla CEO and a 19-year-old college student.

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses at the Axel Springer Awards ceremony in Berlin in December 2020. Photo: AFP

While Musk refused to pay the teen US$50,000 to remove the Twitter bot tracking his private jet, the episode got us interested in the aircraft that ferries the world’s richest person around the planet.

The aircraft in question is a Gulfstream G650ER business jet equipped with ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) tracking technology. The automated Twitter bot used the technology to constantly track Elon’s movements whenever he took to the sky.

The G650ER is a key model in Gulfstream’s line-up and has a starting price of US$66.5 million, and it’s likely Musk’s costs more. It’s also the largest Gulfstream business jet – although, the upcoming G700 is soon to snatch that title away.

The G650ER is an extended range version of the standard G650 and can fly 7,500 nautical miles (more than 8,600 miles) without refuelling. It is powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce BR725 engines, giving cruising speeds of up to Mach 0.925 (710mph or 1,142km/h).

Gulfstream G650ER in the air. Photo: luxurylaunches.com

In 2019, a G650ER set a record by flying from Singapore to Tucson, Arizona, in a single hop, covering a distance of 8,379 nautical miles (around 9,600 miles).

As for the Tesla CEO, he covered a whopping 160,000 miles in his G650ER jet in 2018 alone.