What You Can't Buy, Google Can

When you own a big private airplane, where do you park your airplane? As for John Travolta, he really need a big piece of land including a landing strip just behind his backyard to keep airplanes close to him.

Google's billionaires founders do not have a landing strip behind their backyard yet but their contacts are good enough to obtain permission to park at a federal-managed airport. The airport is only 7 minutes away from Google's headquarters.

Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, get to park their private airplanes (which includes a Boeing 767 and two Gulfstream Vs) at the Moffett Field, an airport run by NASA that has been closed down. Only a helicopter operator and another airplane maker are using it currently.

You see, you just can't park your Boeing 767 anywhere you like as not all runways are built to withstand the weight/power of that plane. Rumour is that the Boeing 767 is purpose built to hold parties (wild or not, I'm not sure) that could hold about 180 people.

NASA has explained that Google could park their planes there owing to an unique agreement that allowed NASA to place scientific instruments and researchers on planes used by the Google founders and at the same time gets to collect scientific data on those flights. Partly to defray the cost of maintaining that runway too.

This type of arrangement is very similar to scenarios in Malaysia for those well-connected ones. And the above Google issue was exposed by a Californian blogger, Valleywag.
Tags: Google, Google Founders, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, NASA, Moffett Field, Boeing 767, Gulfstream V