Santa Monica Airport.
Compared to some other small jetliners at the airport, the Boeing 767 was truly a behemoth.
Simon patiently finished reading the script for 'Home Alone' before rushing over.
The crew, personally selected by Janette, was still patiently waiting for him. There were eight people in total, divided into two groups, each consisting of two pilots and two flight attendants. All of them were Australian, and all were women, which was a specific request from Simon. This private jet was like a residence for Simon, and he wasn't particularly fond of men being in charge of its operation.
The four female pilots were all around forty years old, previously professional pilots for Australian airlines, and before that, they had served in the air force. All of them had at least ten years of flying experience.
Simon paid a very high price to poach these four women. In addition to generous annual salaries, their families could also enjoy benefits provided by Westeros Company, and they only needed to work in this position for ten years before being eligible for early retirement.
The other four flight attendants were purely decorative.
After introductions, Simon boarded the gangway and entered the cabin. The four flight attendants followed him in, proactively introducing him to the various facilities inside the cabin.
With a renovation cost of $15 million, every detail inside the cabin was perfect.
The interior was decorated in a minimalist black and white style, like piano keys, with every arrangement exuding an exquisite and expensive aura. It was fully equipped with a living room, dining room, study, bar, bedroom, conference room, and more. The total area available for passengers to move around exceeded 300 square meters. The front cabin was also a very private two-story duplex suite, giving one the feeling of being in a real apartment.
However, it was ultimately only a medium-sized airliner, and overall, it wasn't as spacious as Simon had imagined.
Although the crew had just completed a sixteen-hour long flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, after Simon's tour, he still had an impatient feeling, like someone who had just received a new toy. He requested the crew to take off again and fly a round trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Cersei Capital's operations targeting the US junk bond market were still ongoing, so Janette didn't come to Los Angeles with him.
Simon also had a lot of things to deal with recently, and the two agreed to meet again after mid-November. At that time, they would probably fly to Finland first to completely take over Nokia's mobile communication equipment division.
The next day was Friday, November 3rd, 1989.
Simon was uncharacteristically woken up by the phone ringing, it was just past five in the morning.
James Raybould called. Photos of the Boeing 767 Simon had just received yesterday had already appeared in several East Coast newspapers. James then sent some faxes over. To maintain a low profile, there were no markings related to Simon on the Boeing 767, and its exterior looked no different from a commercial airliner.
However, the only Boeing 767 parked on the runway at Santa Monica Airport in the photos was clearly Simon's personal plane, because pictures of Simon meeting with the crew yesterday afternoon and subsequently boarding the plane had all been secretly taken.
The articles generally introduced the matter in a gossipy tone, but there were also criticisms of Simon's extravagant behaviour.
Private jets are pretty common in the West, but there are few who use a medium-sized airliner like the Boeing 767, which can carry two to three hundred people, as a private ride. The famous Air Force One is a national machine, and the heads of state of Middle Eastern oil-rich countries also rely on state support for their private planes.
Subsequently, after daybreak on the West Coast, newspapers also began reporting on Simon's private jet.
Santa Monica Airport was not very large, and its confidentiality wasn't particularly good. Discovering that more media outlets were rushing there after hearing the news, wanting to take more photos of Westeros's flying vehicle, Simon quickly instructed the crew to take the Boeing 767 into the air and temporarily fly to San Francisco to be parked at San Jose Airport.
Furthermore, Santa Monica Airport was clearly no longer a suitable place to store the aircraft.
After consideration, Simon had people contact Los Angeles International Airport, intending to rent a hangar there to store his aircraft.
Compared to Santa Monica Airport, Los Angeles International Airport always has hundreds of various types of aircraft, large and small, parked there. Hidden among the crowd, an extra Boeing 767 would not look out of place.
Simon, driven by his deeply ingrained instinct to not flaunt his wealth, hid his Boeing 767. The media discussion, however, became even more lively, and criticisms of Simon's extravagance and waste also subtly increased, eventually forcing the public relations departments of Westeros Company and Daenerys Entertainment to step in to do damage control.
Amidst this excitement, the second week of the North American Halloween season quietly ended.
From November 3rd to November 9th, after the first full week's box office of $31.77 million, 'Scream 2' saw a 33% drop in its second-week box office, collecting another $21.29 million, bringing its cumulative box office to $53.06 million in two weeks.
Compared to the first film, although the sequel's second-week drop was steeper, its two-week box office exceeding $50 million still surpassed many people's expectations.
Other films released during the same period, such as 'Tremors', generally had cumulative box office earnings over two weeks that were still less than 'Scream 2' in just one week.
On November 10th, 'Scream 2' was still playing strongly, and another new film from Daenerys Entertainment's Highgate Film, 'My Left Foot', quietly premiered.
'My Left Foot' only won a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in the first half of the year, but it still attracted considerable attention. Ira Deutchman, at Simon's instruction, had always attached great importance to this film. The choice of the November 10th release date was also made with the upcoming awards season in mind.
As an art-house film destined for a long term word of mouth release strategy, the opening scale of 'My Left Foot' was far from comparable to 'Scream 2'. In its first week, it only had 112 screens, still following Highgate Film radial distribution model, with the first batch of screens concentrated in major core cities across North America.
Speaking of which, 'My Left Foot' wasn't actually Daenerys Entertainment's primary Oscar campaign focus this year.
'Driving Miss Daisy', scheduled for release in early December, was. Therefore, by choosing a November release, 'My Left Foot' would primarily rely on film nominations to accumulate box office revenue.
As for 'Driving Miss Daisy', Simon had already seen the finished film, and its quality was no lower than the original.
Moreover, the biggest advantage of 'Driving Miss Daisy', was that both lead actors in the film were elderly, and it told the story of two elderly people, while also involving the very politically correct topic of race, which would definitely appeal to the preferences of the elderly judges at the Oscars.
Beyond films, the 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' video game, released by Daenerys Entertainment's Blizzard Entertainment studio, also gradually caught the media's attention.