The Smuggler's Run update, released on 29 August 2017, introduced aircraft hangars to Grand Theft Auto Online as a dedicated property class for air-based contraband trafficking (Rockstar North, 2013). With Grand Theft Auto VI set in the Leonida state — a Florida pastiche featuring the Keys, the Everglades and the coastal Vice City metropolis — the conditions for a successor hangar property are arguably more compelling than they were in San Andreas. This report examines the original hangar template, the in-universe trajectory of smuggling content through subsequent updates, and the design vectors that a GTA VI online successor is likely to pursue.
Smuggler's Run added five purchasable hangars across the San Andreas map, four at Los Santos International Airport and one at the Fort Zancudo military base, with the latter requiring the highest entry cost. The hangars functioned as both garages for an expanded roster of aircraft (the Howard NX-25, Western Company Rogue, Buckingham Pyro, and others) and as bases for source/sell missions involving air-dropped contraband (Rockstar North, 2013). Categories of cargo ranged from narcotics and animal products to medical supplies and counterfeit goods, generalising the warehouse model from Further Adventures in Finance and Felony into airspace (Wikipedia, 2026a).
The DLC was narratively linked to Trevor Philips' former associate Ron Jakowski, who served as the in-game broker, and the missions integrated with the broader Gunrunning economic loop introduced earlier in 2017 (Wikipedia, 2026a). Mechanically the hangars represented Rockstar's first attempt at making non-trivial low-altitude flight a primary career pillar, layering NPC interceptor encounters and weather hazards onto cargo runs.
Subsequent updates expanded but did not replace the hangar archetype. The 2025 A Safehouse in the Hills update extended the McKenzie Field Hangar — a small countryside facility — into a fully featured arms-trafficking front under Oscar Guzman, including a gunship theft setpiece (Wikipedia, 2026a). This represents a deliberate "second-generation" hangar: smaller, narratively richer, and integrated with veteran NPCs, suggesting Rockstar values the hangar template enough to revisit rather than retire it. The persistence of aviation businesses across the Smuggler's Run (2017), Air Freight Cargo mechanics, and the 2025 McKenzie expansion demonstrates that air-based smuggling has become a recurring pillar of the GTA Online business ecology.
While Rockstar has not detailed online infrastructure for Grand Theft Auto VI, Jason Schreier has reported that the title will ship with "a significant online mode" akin to Grand Theft Auto Online (Wikipedia, 2026b). The Leonida setting is particularly suited to a hangar successor:
A plausible successor would consolidate hangar, dock and airstrip properties into a single Keys-based smuggling franchise, leveraging the Everglades for low-radar flight corridors and Vice City's port for intermodal handoffs.
Hangars have evolved from a single 2017 DLC pillar into a recurring, regenerating business class within GTA Online. Given Leonida's setting, an established smuggling-coded protagonist, and Rockstar's commitment to a substantial online component, a hangar successor in GTA VI online appears highly probable, likely deepening rather than abandoning the source/sell loop established in Smuggler's Run.
Rockstar North (2013) Grand Theft Auto Online [video game]. New York: Rockstar Games.
Wikipedia (2026a) 'Grand Theft Auto Online', Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_Online (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026b) 'Grand Theft Auto VI', Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Schreier, J. (2022) 'Take-Two's Rockstar Games Confirms Grand Theft Auto VI Is in Development', Bloomberg. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-04/take-two-s-rockstar-games-confirms-grand-theft-auto-vi-is-in-development (Accessed: 14 May 2026).