A plane registered to the Louisiana State Police and often used by Gov. Jeff Landry landed in McAllen, Texas, on Friday morning, according to publicly available flight data.
The flight, which landed in the city about 65 miles west of SpaceX's Starbase launch site, came as SpaceX is negotiating to build a new launch site in coastal Louisiana. The plane spent under six hours in Texas, according to flight records, landing in McAllen around 8:30 am and taking off around 2 pm.
According to the governor's spokeswoman, Kate Kelly, the plane transported state police detectives to Edinburg, Texas, in relation to a multi-state criminal probe. 'The governor was not in Texas,' she said. 'He was in Louisiana all day today.' On a radio show Friday, the governor had appeared to say that he had gone 'to Texas,' but Kelly said that was not the case and that he was referring to text messages.
On Thursday, a plane belonging to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, was tracked to Lafayette. That plane also landed in Brownsville, Texas on Friday, according to publicly available flight records.
The Times-Picayune | The Advocate reported earlier this month that SpaceX is negotiating to build a new facility in coastal marshland in Vermilion Parish, in an area to the south of Pecan Island. The deal is related to a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the state against ExxonMobil, in which the state accused the oil company of damaging Louisiana’s fragile coastline and contributing to land loss.