In my eight years as an airline pilot, I've managed to visit many of this country's challenging airports. As a pilot for a regional airline, I got to spend lots of time visiting La Guardia. I have no problem with the airport itself. Some pilots don't like the fact that two of the four runways end in water. Sure, a few airplanes have gone in the drink over the years, but considering the number of operations the airport hosts every day, it's a safe operation.
My biggest problem with La Guardia when I visited it often in the first half of this decade was the ground traffic that led to taxi times often far exceeding flight time. Things have been better in the handful of times I've been there since those days. The arrival and departure procedures to the airport are not too difficult if you take a few minutes to brief and set up everything ahead of time. An unprepared single pilot not using an autopilot would have difficulty, however. For the prepared pilot or crew, the reward was often an unprecedented view of New York City flying up the Hudson River.
Likewise, Washington's Reagan National Airport has unusual departures and arrivals because a number of prohibited areas lie near the main runway. The River Visual to Runway 19 is a well-known approach that is easy because it's old school. All you have to do is follow the winding river and fly a visual approach like you learned in primary training. The only problem is that you can't see your landing runway from far out because it's reached after a 40-degree right turn at about 300 feet agl. Don't stray left on the arrival and bust the prohibited airspace, a potential career-ruining mistake, especially in these days of heightened security. Approaches like this force you to concentrate and fly at your best. As with La Guardia, the payoff is a spectacular, up-close view of downtown Washington and its many monuments.
Philadelphia International can be a challenging airport when all the big jets are landing on Runway 27 Right and the smaller jets and props are sent to Runway 35, the shorter runway that intersects Runway 27 Right. Controllers vector arrivals to Runway 35 to coincide with arrivals on 27 Right. It's all about timing, and when it works, it's like a well-choreographed dance. But to get the timing right, controllers have to jockey your speed-often a lot-which makes power and gear/flap configurations tricky. As you get closer to the airport, they'll ask you if you have the Runway 27R traffic in sight, which is a challenge since the metal jet is hard to spot among the cityscape in the background. If you spot the traffic, you'll probably say to yourself, "This'll never work." Just about then, the controller says, "Spacing looks good, cleared to land Runway 35."
As you fly down the pipe you see that the crossing jet will in fact beat you to the airport, but where that jet lands determines what kind of landing you're going to have. Unfortunately, the touchdown zones of Runways 27R and 35 are in the same spot. If the landing jet is still flying as it crosses Runway 35, it leaves its spinning wake right there for you to fly through in the middle of your flare to land. This happened to me on more than one occasion, and it makes for a turbulent arrival in the last few seconds of flight. The freshly deposited vortices come as two big whumps right as you're trying to finesse a decent landing. You can't fly over the vortices, as that will put you out of the touchdown zone on the relatively short runway.
So although I love the fact that La Guardia and Reagan National airports keep me on full alert, I'm not a big fan of Philly's arrival to Runway 35. It's just a stressful approach in which you're pretty much guaranteed to make a bad landing if the crossing traffic hasn't landed when it crossed your runway. And John Wayne Airport in Orange County? That's worthy of an entire column to come.
Pete Bedell is a Boeing 737 first officer for a major airline and contributor to AOPA Flight Training and AOPA Pilot magazines.
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