As some of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I tried to do a “Touch & Go” at JFK. I figured that due to Covid-19, the skies would be pretty empty and ATC would have plenty of time on their hands. That attempt did not work 🙁 The controller told me “Touch & Gos” were not allowed @ JFK without prior permission from the Port Authority.
So this past week, I decided, I would try to get permission. I didn’t really know who to call. So I started my research by looking up the JFK entry in the FAA Airport Facility Directory. The first line of the comments stated that JFK was a “Part 93 High Density airport”, which means it had special rules. But it didn’t state what the rules were. It did have the phone number of the airport manager. So I just called and asked. He told me to talk the manager at the control tower and gave me that number. When I spoke to the Control tower, they explained that “Touch & Gos” must be authorized by the Port Authority and gave me that number. However, the tower told me something interesting. While “Touch & Gos” require Port Authority permission, full stop landings (with a taxi back) does not require any special permission. He suggested that I do that and also suggested filing a flight plan as that would guarantee a clearance. So that would be my back up plan. But I did want to try to get the authorization.
So I called the Port Authority. They were helpful. But not cooperative. They told me that “Tough & Gos” are no longer permitted at JFK AT ALL 🙁 While I had them on the phone, I asked about landing fees. While most US airports have no landing fee, this was JFK. So the basic landing fee was $25. If you land between 3PM and 11PM, there is an additional $100 surcharge. Plus if you go to the FBO ramp, the FBO charges a ramp fee of ~ $50-100. So I decided I would go in the morning (to avoid the $100 surcharge) and just do a full stop taxi back to avoid the FBO fees …. This would make the fee only the flat $25 🙂
You can see how it went in this video:
Overall, I am glad I did it… because it is sort of a bucket list item. But there really are so many other scenic places to fly that are a lot easier to get to.
Cheers,
== T.J.==
But the weather wasn’t very good … Not terrible, not dangerous, just light rain and low ceilings in both DXR and POU.
Luckily, POU is a fantastic airport with lots of instrument approaches. I came in on the RNAV GPS 06, which had an LPV minimums of 503 FT. Luckily I broke out of the clouds @ ~ 560 FT and was greeted by a runway that was lit up like a Xmas tree! This turned out to be the perfect real world use case for the amazing Perspective Plus avionics in the new Cirrus!!
After this flight, I am really starting to feel comfortable with the new avionics!
I think it will take me some time to master this new flight deck. But it is a really fun cockpit to experiment with 🙂
Fortunately Hurricane Florence had slowed down and stalled over South Carolina, which gave us the perfect window to escape. We flew direct 4.5 hours form TN to NY and missed all of the weather!
Now we are really ready for some more amazing adventures!
Washington center laughed at my direct routing and gave me a typical Northeast clearance with 3 victor airways and 6 fixes. Luckily it was close to a direct routing and the weather was so nice, I didn’t notice the time go by.
As you can see above, I was lucky in enough to arrange a tiny corner of the hanger to call home for the week. In the photo below, you can see me with the CEO’s G550 in the background.
