Picked up my sister from here to take her flying. All in all a nice airport. Nestled outside of Newark/New York Class B and a cozy little airport to land at. As the other reviews state, bring your own chocks and tie-downs. There were a few pairs of chocks on the fence railing but they were for the flight school. Speaking of the flight school, beware as there appears to be some heavy flight training around that area on busier days. I went on a Wednesday so it wasn't too bad, but I'd imagine on the weekends it gets heavy. That being said, also big thanks to Aero Privilege for letting my sister borrow a headset. Of course the one thing I forgot to bring on that flight was a spare headset for her, and after asking the main CFI, he found her a pair to use.

I flew into this airport for an overnight stay on Jan. 14, 2012. I used to use this airport regularly in the 1990's and at that time it was indeed poorly maintained as Hollada says. Since then, however, it has had a substantial infusion of money from somewhere. The runway is newly paved, there are extensive, brand new parking areas for the based aircraft, and the building, although it still looks like a cinder block shack from the outside, has been rather tastefully renovated inside. That being said....problems with the transient parking cited by Hollada still apply. There's a set of chocks kept hanging on the fence but no tiedowns and the transient parking is the one surface that has not been renewed -- grass still grows up between the cracks and it's not at all level -- set your parking brake before stepping out of your plane or you could have an accident without even being at the controls. Since I was there in winter during an exceptionally cold weekend, I asked about jump starting and preheat. The attendant seemed surprised by that question and said those things weren't available, although maybe that meant they were only available on weekdays. Fortunately, my engine started even after a cold soak overnight. There is no weather reporting, not even an AWOS. I forget how I handled this in the 1990's but in my recent trip when I was preparing to leave it was clear from my altimeter reading compared to field elevation that the setting had changed overnight. I solved that problem by asking clearance delivery (there's an 800 number for that you can get from Flight Service) what the altimeter was in Newark's current ATIS. I took off with my altimeter set to that, as Newark is some 25 miles away. Central Jersey Regional's favorable topography (no nearby mountains to hit, semi-rural environment) and location so close to the big cities of the New York region yet outside controlled airspace are assets that should have made it a wonderful place to fly in. Management of the airport hasn't figured out how to capitalize on its assets and that's too bad, especially after so much money has been spent improving it, with so little return to the visting pilot.