Flying Over Manhattan
I visited New York City this week. As a private pilot, I can technically just rent a plane and go fly around entirely by myself. The airspace in the area, however, is so complicated that I prefer to be on the safe side by flying at least the first time with a local instructor.
There are four classes of airports in the United States: Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Golf. The first three are towered, and Bravo airports are the busiest out of these. Think of LAX or SFO. With JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia, New York City happens to have three (!) Bravo airports in close proximity; and Manhattan is right in the middle of their overlapping airspaces. Below is the FAA map showing the three airports and their spheres of influence. Manhattan is where the numbers 13 and 7 are.
The airport we flew out of is called Republic Airport (KFRG) and is situated on Long Island right below the Bravo shelf of JFK. I chose to rent a Cessna 182T, which is with 230 hp the higher-performance variant of the C172S on which I did most of my flight training. The 20-year-old lady is equipped with a different avionics system than what I am used to. A Bendix/King KMD550 multi-function display, KNL94 GPS navigation system, and a KAP140 autopilot. At home, I exclusively flew in G1000-equipped aircraft so I prepared by watching some video tutorials explaining the systems.
I took the train out to Long Island to meet up with Bairon at the flight school Long Island Aviators. We briefed the flight and hopped onto the plane. I told him I would like to pretend I was flying by myself, to be thrown into the cold water and thereby learn more instead of focusing on photos and views. This turned out to be exactly what he had intended to do too. He was like, “you’re a pilot, so you’ll just do everything.”
I started up the six cylinder engine and called up the ground controller requesting a southwest-bound departure. I had prepared the expected taxi instructions for runway 32 on my iPad: “runway Three-Two, taxi via Mike, cross runway One, Golf, Alpha, Alpha One”. Next thing you know we were already taking off!
With just 1200’, our initial altitude was rather low because we expected a descent down to 400’ shortly after, to fly below JFK’s approach corridor. After contacting the tower, however, we realized they were using runways 31L/R for landings, which meant we could cruise a little bit higher at a comfortable 1000’. So we flew along the coastline – inside the Bravo airspace – when Bairon suddenly pointed out a whale in the water below us. He initiated a turn so we could see it better and told the tower about the planned 360 pretty much immediately. The tower responded and told us that he had already noticed our deviation from the course and wondered what was up. That’s class Bravo airspace for you… they monitor everything very, very closely. We told him there was a whale, and the controller said, “have fun.” There were even some ships around the oceanic creature with other spectators.
We flew further along the coastline until we left the Bravo and were handed over to Newark Approach. Now, to understand the rules of flying around Manhattan, we have to go into a bit more detail. There are a lot of helicopter tours and general aviation enthusiasts enjoying the views, which makes the area very congested. On top of that, airliners for all three airports are cruising around right above the city too. To control the situation, there’s an area above the Hudson River called the Hudson River Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA). It is like a slice cut out of the overlying Bravo airspace that is entirely uncontrolled by ATC. It does, however, require pilots to follow special rules: for example, airplanes must not exceed 140 kts airspeed, must have all lights turned on, and must monitor a given frequency on which they are also required to make regular position reporting calls when flying past the Statue of Liberty, the aircraft carrier, some bridges, and other landmarks. The altitudes to fly at are also specified, and so is the “side of the road” (here the river) on which one must fly. All of this must be studied in detail beforehand, and I did so the previous two evenings in preparation for the flight. I also listened in on the particular frequency to see what people would do in practice, which (fortunately) coincided with the regulatory requirements.
Flying into the SFRA is the first option, but there is another possible choice: requesting permission to remain inside the Bravo airspace and fly about 500’ above, under ATC’s watchful care.
Bairon told me during the flight briefing at the flight school that this was his preferred choice, and it makes perfect sense given it is the safer option allowing us to stay clear of the hornet nest that the tour helicopters emerge from. It also allowed us to fly up the East River as opposed to flying only over the Hudson. When ATC asked, “state your intentions,” and I replied by saying, “we’d like to fly up the East River, overfly Central Park, return over the Hudson, fly back up the East River, and proceed direct to Republic Airport.” They approved the request except for the last part, and we were good to go.
Approaching Manhattan from the south was a spectacular moment, and I took the first photos of the flight:
The Statue of Liberty was off to our left, and some container ships were completing the picture. Seeing the high-rises from so close, illuminated by the sun that was getting ready to set, was a wonderful experience. I generally feel emotionally touched by infrastructure (like bridges, railway systems, or wide highways), and seeing the most densely populated piece of land in the United States - over 70k people per square mile - right in front was quite moving for a moment. Bairon took the controls here, and we flew along. We proceeded as requested by overflying the large park, which gave us another great view of downtown NYC.
After a circle around the Statue of Liberty and waving to it, we flew up north. Bairon had done some texting on his phone, and after the next ATC handover, we were on frequency with a friend of his and joked around a little bit. With LaGuardia, we had then spoken to all three airports within this short flight! For the remainder of the flight, we stayed on flight following, albeit clear of the Bravo by cruising along at 1300’ right below its 1500’ shelf on a direct course to Republic Airport, with Manhattan in the rear mirror.
Closer to Republic, we made our call: “N2097S, 10 miles to the northwest, inbound for full stop with Mike,” and did not get a response. For class Delta airports like Republic, the rules state that a pilot must not enter the airspace unless their callsign (N2097S in our case) has been read back by the controller. If the controller says “aircraft calling, standby,” it means waiting outside. If they say “N2097S” and nothing else, entering is permitted. The controller ended up not responding at all, and we flew along the outside of the airspace. A long minute later, he did get back to us after all and cleared us. With 220k aircraft operations per year, Republic is among the busiest general aviation airports in the US. For comparison, the airport of Berlin (EDDB) has 177k, and Atlanta (KATL) has 776k.
When we arrived, it was especially busy with eight aircraft on final. That was not an issue for us, but another first for me. In Palo Alto, I felt like it was a busy day when I was number four for landing. Just when we turned on final the last sliver of sun disappeared behind the horizon. I flew the landing, and Bairon told me to try not bringing the power to idle above the runway threshold, but to keep it in for a bit longer, which made everything smoother than usual. I’ll experiment more with that.
We taxied back, parked, filled out the logbook, and a great flight came to its end. The total flight time was 1.7 hours, and the entire route can be seen below. You can see the 360 done for whale spotting, the left turn to overfly Central Park, and a lap above the Statue of Liberty. Originally, this was supposed to be a flight with a VIP passenger – Mr. Leander Berg – but unfortunately, the logistics didn’t work out. This will certainly not be the last opportunity to fly in the NYC airspace!
