My First Time to New York’s JFK Airport

The busy fun continues. This flight ended in a new airport for me…the dreaded JFK in New York’s busy airspace!

We fly to that area a lot but usually land in Teterboro in New Jersey, the corporate reliever airport for New York City.

Usually, JFK Airport requires a scheduled slot to arrive there, so it’s really tough to get there on time and secure a slot. Especially when we aren’t scheduled like the airliners. But for the past few months and through this summer, JFK has suspended slot requirements to see how it impacts the number of airplanes that come to the airport.

They want to see if they can hack it without the required slots.

That airport is pretty intimidating, so I don’t see us flying into there very often. Our passengers needed to fly from JFK to elsewhere today, so it was most convenient for them to land at this airport.

But it’s not my first choice of airport there! New York is scary!

We were scheduled to leave at 10:00 AM this morning to get them there on time. Lots of airplanes were safe at home this week. The weather is so nice this time of year…it will certainly empty out over the summer when our temperatures are so awful!

I’m already dreading that. Yuck!

They were moving other airplanes around to get ready for departure after us.

After I called Ground Control to let them know that we were ready to taxi, we were told to follow this guy to the runway.

And I was just fine with that. Look at this gorgeous thing! It’s an old airplane, as seen in the old low-bypass engines. This one has a noise reducer on it to meet Level II noise abatement requirements, which most airports require these days.

Soon, we were climbing above the gorgeous city. Just north of this airport are lots of business complexes. It’s always fun to see them from the sky.

Can you see the runway that we just departed? It’s tucked away inside the city limits.

It’s not all work up here, though. There are several new housing developments, too. Can you see the community golf course and lake? The blue looks so pretty from up here.

But let’s face it…everything looks pretty from up here!

And already, we are at 10,000 feet as we continue our climb towards the east. You can see our departure runway even better in this picture.

Take a deep breath…

Here is the airport diagram for JFK Airport. Yikes!

I have a college buddy who is based here in a commuter airline, so I got all caught up on some local tricks. That really helped me, since going into such a crazy airport was just a teensy weensy bit scary!

If you crane your neck, you can see the edge of Albuquerque down there.

Hi, Susan!

I lived in this pretty city for a year and loved it.

Because of the nature of our destination, we got no shortcuts today. We had to fly our clearance almost point-to-point to give the New York controllers time to make space for us.

This airport is a whole different ballgame, folks.

And here is the clearance! Cleared to JFK via the Scottsdale 7 Departure, Albuquerque transition, Brickyard, Rosewood, Dryer, Jamestown, J-70 to Wilkes-Barre for the Lendy 6 arrival into JFK.

Makes perfect sense, right?

Sorry for the chicken scratch…they read clearances very quickly!

After we descended through some nasty icing clouds, we broke out to see this. We are over the Atlantic heading east as we descend to set up for the ILS to Runway 31L.

Look at those tankers! Isn’t this cool?!

Our first view of land was part of Long Island. Nothing warm about those beaches today! It’s about forty degrees and super windy!

We turned towards final for our runway and started to get sight of civilization. Isn’t that a pretty wing, too?

Cleared to land, Runway 31L. My friend just suggested that I sound confident on the radio and ask for help if I needed it. That’s what I always do, but it worked here, too!

They had no idea that I was a little nervous coming to this big, bad airport today!

Ignorance is bliss, right?

And as we taxied to our ramp at the Sheltair FBO, we could see the city! This is a different view than normal, since we are east of the city instead of the usual west across the Hudson in New Jersey.

Can you see the One World Trade Center? It dwarfs everything else now. It will be incredible to see it finished.

For some reason, they were storing train cars here on the airport as well. There were so many huge airliners coming in and out, but I was too busy making sure that we knew where to go to get any pictures.

Sorry. Pink trains will have to suffice.

You’ll just have to believe me that JFK is for the big boys!

But we landed in cold and windy JFK!

We loaded our passengers and their bags into an awaiting car that took them over to the passenger terminal. We landed around 4:30, which makes it perfect for their 7:50 PM departure.

Being early for commercial flights never hurts. You’ve worked with TSA before, right?

Oh boy.

JFK wasn’t as bad as I was expecting! I was pleasantly surprised! Actually, getting off the airport for dinner proved to be harder for us tonight!

I sure don’t want to go back, if that’s what you’re wondering.