Nonstop to Teterboro…A First For Me!

This trip meant a lot to me, since I knew that I would have a whole two days of my own to explore New York City. It’s been years since I’ve been able to do this.

Which means that I was well overdue.

I pre-flighted Gladys inside the hangar today, which was nice. It’s amazing how much hotter it can be outside under the sun! Then we tugged her out to the ramp where we plugged in a GPU to prepare for starting engines and flying away.

To New York City. Did I mention that?

I’ve spent a lot of time in Seattle lately, which I love. But NYC is just in a league of its own. And, even cooler than that, this is the first time that I’ve ever been able to leave the Valley of the Sun and go nonstop all the way to Teterboro, which is the corporate aviation reliever airport for the New York City area.

Nonstop! Isn’t Gladys a champ?!

Thanks to some storms happening in North Carolina (wha?), we were delayed for our takeoff by two hours. Yuck! Teterboro is always the first one to be punished for bad weather anywhere in the country! The three main airports in that area (La Guardia, JFK, and Newark) always get priority.

Teterboro is the ugly stepsister that has never fully been excepted by the others.

Luckily, my passengers kept busy for those few hours by shopping at the nearby Kierland Commons. And they got some neat things to wear for their trip to NYC. So maybe it was a good thing that we couldn’t leave when originally planned?

It was a nice, disgusting warm day. I was looking forward to the non-triple digits in New York for a few days (you’ll see later that I forgot to factor in the humidity factor).

We left on Thursday around noon and won’t be coming back until late on Monday evening.

Which means that I will have Friday and Saturday to do whatever I want. And Sunday, too, but I opted to not go into the city on that day. The Sabbath is hard to keep sacred on the road, but I do try.

I will say this for our loooooooong flight to Teterboro this afternoon…we got to see some killer storms from a safe distance!

Speaking of long, the flight took almost 4.5 hours. Which is probably a record for me. Previous to this, my longest flight in a private airplane was making it all the way home from Atlanta to Phoenix in a Beechjet. It helped that we had practically no headwind and only one passenger.

Look at that distance (1648…see it?)! It’s definitely my farthest flight to date, and I’m loving it. Today, since we are eastbound, we have a nice tailwind to help push us along. We will definitely have to stop for fuel on our flight home next Monday.

Wind is a crazy thing. You either love it or hate it in the sky! It just depends on your direction of flight.

In order to get the best fuel consumption possible, and thus have enough to make it all the way to the New York area from Arizona, we climbed up to FL450. We burn very little fuel here at our service ceiling…about 425 pounds per engine, per hour.

We were still able to go high speed, though, and didn’t have to adjust the throttles for a slower flight to conserve fuel. We landed with 900 pounds of fuel at the end, despite being descended before we wanted.

I sweet-talked a slight descent delay from New York Center, but they have too many airplanes to worry about to let us stay high for very long.

And, thanks to some fun weather that popped up near northern Pennsylvania, it was rather difficult getting into Teterboro tonight. They put us on the Wilkes Barre 4 Arrival, but then had to divert us even farther north to avoid some storms.

We watched the fuel gauge the entire time, hoping that we wouldn’t have to stop.

We passed this poofy guy, feeling sorry for the airliners behind us who would have to contend with its future thunderstorm status. We beat a lot of storms today and only ran into trouble as we neared our destination.

Isn’t this one neat? It looks like a hat to me. Hey, if you have four hours of free time on your hands, you would imagine shapes in the clouds, too!

This was the awful stuff. We had to fly through some of it but picked the least-awful part. Our passengers are sensitive to bumps, but who isn’t? Thus, we always try to find the best place to try for a smooth ride. Sometimes it’s easier than other times.

Phew! We made it through! Look at that beast! We just picked our way through that. And it’s wasn’t fun.

Yes, I know this one is fuzzy. I am hoping that you will use your artistic-interpretation eyes to enjoy it, since it could also be seen as really cool. It’s hard to hold the camera still for crisp shots when we are getting bumped around from storms.

This is New Jersey. Teterboro is in New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from New York City.

We always land at Meridian Flight FBO, and they are incredible. They let us borrow a car for a few hours for dinner. I had some catering from the flight that hadn’t been touched, so my dinner was already taken care of. Score!

So I just went to the hotel. I was tuckered out!

And, since I was going to be here for four nights, I was pretty stoked that the Hampton Inn was so nice. They usually are, and I found this one online for $103 a night. It’s more than I prefer to pay, but sometimes you have to compensate for location.

In this case, I was so close to NYC that I could smell it. In a good way!

I spent a lot of time reading in this chair on Sunday. I love when the rooms have designated areas…including a reading nook. They must have known that I was coming when they renovated a few years ago!

Isn’t the leather/fabric combination beautiful? It was comfy, too. Bonus!

And I also spent a lot of time in the “office” area of my room. Here, I researched the best way to get to New York City from my hotel. And where to eat while I was in the city. And how to get the most bang for my buck. I knew that this trip would cost me a little out-of-pocket, but I also knew that it would be worth it.

Let’s explore the city together! This entire week will be lovingly dedicated to NYC!