The philanthropist, art collector and thoroughbred breeder Paul Mellon (1907-1999), logged by name on two legs of Jeffrey Epstein's Gulfstream N908JE on 6 April 1998: W47 to Richmond, Virginia and back the same afternoon, flights 1090 and 1091, alongside Jeffrey Epstein, two unnamed women and a passenger recorded only as 'Carolyn'. The identification, previously carried as unconfirmed, is resolved by the airport code. W47 is Upperville Airport, the private 5,100-foot runway Paul Mellon built on his own Virginia estate in 1957, in Fauquier County, not the King George County the third-party flight-log spreadsheet renders it as. The aircraft therefore landed at Mellon's own airstrip, which is also what the pilot's annotation on the inbound leg says: 'ROKEBY FARMS', Rokeby being Mellon's estate and stables. The Richmond hop fits the same afternoon: the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, of which he was the principal benefactor, is there. He was 90 and died the following February. These two flights are the only appearance of the name in the corpus, and nothing in it connects him to Jeffrey Epstein beyond this one day.
Key Findings
- Flight logs, 6 April 1998: W47 to RIC (Richmond, Virginia) on N908JE, flight 1090, logged 'JE, PAUL MELLON, 2 FEMALES, CAROLYN', and the return RIC to W47, flight 1091, logged 'JE, PAUL MELLON, 2 FEMALES'. Recorded in all independently sourced versions of the log (EFTA02846460, the Edwards exhibit, and the Gawker copy).
- The preceding leg the same day, flight 1089 from Teterboro to W47, is annotated 'ROKEBY FARMS' (read as ROXEBY, LAKEBY and LIKEBY across the transcriptions) - the name of Paul Mellon's Virginia estate and stables.
- IDENTIFICATION CONFIRMED (2026-08-03) by resolving the airport code. W47 is Upperville Airport, Paul Mellon's own private airstrip on his Fauquier County estate, built 1957 and lengthened to 5,100 feet, later carried as 2VG2 and depicted as abandoned by the 2023 aeronautical chart. That runway length is consistent with the Gulfstream G-1159B on these legs. The aircraft landed at Mellon's airfield, the log names Mellon, and the pilot annotated the destination with the name of Mellon's estate.
- DATA CORRECTION: data/flight_logs.json renders W47 as 'King George, VA' on flights 1089-1092. That resolution came from the third-party flight-log spreadsheet and is wrong; King George County is roughly ninety miles from Upperville. Our own gazetteer returns null for W47 because OurAirports no longer carries the decommissioned identifier.
- Listed under the initials 'PM' in the unredacted flight-log spreadsheet.
Flights #
2documented flights
2with Jeffrey Epstein aboard
2distinct routes
1998-04-06 to 1998-04-06date range
2/2confirmed, 2+ sources
Hover an airport or a route for its name, the number of flights and the first few dates.
98
Most-flown routes
- W47 → RICUpperville VA → Richmond1
- RIC → W47Richmond → Upperville VA1
Frequent co-passengers
Aircraft
G-1159B (2)
Source: flight-log database (private aircraft, 1995–2015), cross-referenced against the unified flight index. Protected victims appear as REDACTED so counts stay correct without identifying anyone.