I spent few days in New York last week and wanted to fly on the Hudson river, something that has been on my list. Weather was cold but the sky was great, so it happened!
I rented a Cirrus SR22 at P6 Aviation in KCDW, Essex County Airport, and booked one of their instructors to come with me.
We didn’t really need the speed of that aircraft, but the SR22 is really cool and autopilot is of great help to strictly hold altitude in class B while you are sightseeing and looking out for other traffic in that busy area.
We took off and flew to the Hudson river from the north, choosing the “skyline route” which is in class B airspace at 1300ft or above, with support from ATC. This route keeps you out of the busy exclusion (below 1300ft), where you don’t have ATC and is less relaxing as traffic is heavy, especially with the helicopters that can be unpredictable. Interesting fact: we took off from a controlled airfield and flew in the class B airspace of New York, but we were not required to file a flight plan (this is science fiction in Europe). ATC kept us at 1500ft most of the time, asking us to climb to 2000 a couple of times for separation.
We started from the Alpine tower all the way down to Verrazzano bridge, with the beautiful Manhattan on our left.
At Verrazzano we turned around to enter the East river, with the east side of Manhattan on our left and Brooklin on the right. We have been switching a lot between Newark and Laguardia control, and ATC has been fantastic accommodating all our requests while managing the heavy airline and GA traffic in that area. Impressive!
We requested to turn from East river back to the Hudson, flying over Central Park (not very green in this period of the year). Again, ATC has been great and cleared us, constantly informing us about traffic.
Another round of the skyline route, and at Verrazzano we canceled flight following to descend into the class B exclusion: I wanted to circle the Statue of Liberty, and we did it after coordinating on the local frequency with other traffic that was there.
After circling the Statue of Liberty at 700ft, we left the exclusion and flew back to Cadwell flying around the southern part of Newark airspace.
Special trip, great experience on a fantastic aircraft, and nice instructor and very professional service from P6 Aviation!
Nice trip!
Great story. I was inspired myself through some posts here on EuroGA to rent a C182 at KCDW in New Jersey to fly at night over Manhattan with our oldest daughter. That was a great experience flying over the Hudson River and East River. At one point I contacted ATC at JFK and asked if I could do an ILS approach at John F Kennedy (KJFK) which they allowed me to do! It was on my bucket list to fly there.
I would have maybe preferred to fly the Cirrus instead of the C182 although the high wings of the C182 were playing out nicely.
Heel vet! See you at Teuge next month.
Greetings,
Mark
