Flown to an airshow's closed airport?

[Ricky]

Missing the CAF this year and someone asking about flying to Wings
Over Houston got me thinking...

Several years ago I had been saving all my nickles and dimes for
months in order to rent a C-172 and fly, instead of drive, to the CAF
Airsho out in Midland, TX. From Waco It's about a 2.5 hour flight
IIRC, which beats almost 5 hours on the road.
I knew the Airport closed at a certain time and I flight-planned to
arrive in plenty of time before Midland International's closure went
into effect. Well, the C-172 wouln't start. It cranked but would not
fire. They had a C-152 available. Ugh. I unloaded and re-loaded and
got off about 45 minutes later than I had planned. Now I was nervous.
According to my calculations (more like good guesses) I would arrive
minutes before the a/p closure. Of course the C-152 cruises slower
than the 172 so I had a stress-filled flight west, which was NOT fun.
At the windmills (about halfway) it was obvious I would miss the close
of Midland International by about 5 minutes so I redlined the rented
Cessna and started descending to speed things up. 20 miles out the bad
news came on my watch...and on ATIS...the airport was closed!
Have you ever BEGGED ATC? I begged that morning. I kept it short, but
I begged them to let me in, to no avail. I thought about declaring an
emergency but I think that would have made a bad day even worse. I had
to divert to Midland Airpark north-east of the city, which was the
only other a/p I knew of with avgas.
On the ground I caught a taxi to Midland International, which cost
almost $50.00. All courtesy cars were being used. I missed the first
hour or so of my favorite airshow, had a huge cab bill, had to fly a
C-152, and couldn't land where I wanted. The Airsho was awesome as
usual but was somewhat bitter that year.

Have you ever flown to an airshow and yet couldn't land at the field
because it was closed?

Ricky

[Mike]

"Ricky" > wrote in message
...
>
> Missing the CAF this year and someone asking about flying to Wings
> Over Houston got me thinking...
>
> Several years ago I had been saving all my nickles and dimes for
> months in order to rent a C-172 and fly, instead of drive, to the CAF
> Airsho out in Midland, TX. From Waco It's about a 2.5 hour flight
> IIRC, which beats almost 5 hours on the road.
> I knew the Airport closed at a certain time and I flight-planned to
> arrive in plenty of time before Midland International's closure went
> into effect. Well, the C-172 wouln't start. It cranked but would not
> fire. They had a C-152 available. Ugh. I unloaded and re-loaded and
> got off about 45 minutes later than I had planned. Now I was nervous.
> According to my calculations (more like good guesses) I would arrive
> minutes before the a/p closure. Of course the C-152 cruises slower
> than the 172 so I had a stress-filled flight west, which was NOT fun.
> At the windmills (about halfway) it was obvious I would miss the close
> of Midland International by about 5 minutes so I redlined the rented
> Cessna and started descending to speed things up. 20 miles out the bad
> news came on my watch...and on ATIS...the airport was closed!
> Have you ever BEGGED ATC? I begged that morning. I kept it short, but
> I begged them to let me in, to no avail. I thought about declaring an
> emergency but I think that would have made a bad day even worse. I had
> to divert to Midland Airpark north-east of the city, which was the
> only other a/p I knew of with avgas.
> On the ground I caught a taxi to Midland International, which cost
> almost $50.00. All courtesy cars were being used. I missed the first
> hour or so of my favorite airshow, had a huge cab bill, had to fly a
> C-152, and couldn't land where I wanted. The Airsho was awesome as
> usual but was somewhat bitter that year.
>
> Have you ever flown to an airshow and yet couldn't land at the field
> because it was closed?

Ah yes, the best laid plans of mice and men. Such are the joys of air
travel.

Generally I don't like flying into airshows where the airport is closed for
that very reason. I also don't like it because it means I'm stuck there
until the airport reopens. Even when the airport reopens you are typically
waiting a long time after that for all the airshow planes and the rest of
the fly-ins to leave. So even under the best of circumstances your schedule
is not your own and you're going to be stuck in traffic. That negates most
of the advantages for flying myself as far as I'm concerned.

[es330td]

On Oct 2, 11:34*am, "Mike" <nospam@ microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Generally I don't like flying into airshows where the airport is closed for
> that very reason. *I also don't like it because it means I'm stuck there
> until the airport reopens. *Even when the airport reopens you are typically
> waiting a long time after that for all the airshow planes and the rest of
> the fly-ins to leave. *

I encountered the same issue in Atlanta. I thought about flying to
Falcon Field for the Great Georgia Air Show but someone who overheard
me saying that told me he waited for well over an hour in a hot
airplane burning fuel and engine time waiting his turn to take off to
leave. He said it seemed like a good idea but in retrospect he'd
never fly again unless his plane was part of an exhibit.

[Mike]

"es330td" > wrote in message
...
> On Oct 2, 11:34 am, "Mike" <nospam@ microsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > Generally I don't like flying into airshows where the airport is closed
> > for
> > that very reason. I also don't like it because it means I'm stuck there
> > until the airport reopens. Even when the airport reopens you are
> > typically
> > waiting a long time after that for all the airshow planes and the rest
> > of
> > the fly-ins to leave.
>
> I encountered the same issue in Atlanta. I thought about flying to
> Falcon Field for the Great Georgia Air Show but someone who overheard
> me saying that told me he waited for well over an hour in a hot
> airplane burning fuel and engine time waiting his turn to take off to
> leave. He said it seemed like a good idea but in retrospect he'd
> never fly again unless his plane was part of an exhibit.

I've done that too and it's still a pain in the arse getting out, even when
ATC is letting all the exhibit aircraft out first. You must first wait
until they get all the crowd cleared away from the aircraft before you can
even fire up, and since all are parked close together you must wait to be
marshalled to the taxiway.

[Ricky]

On Oct 2, 9:44*am, Ricky > wrote:

> Several years ago I had been saving all my nickles and dimes for
> months in order to rent a C-172 and fly, instead of drive, to the CAF
> Airsho out in Midland, TX

I failed to mention that the rental bill, for which I had been saving
agressively, was well north of $300.00

Ugh.

Ya know, the two times I've flown to Midland (and once when CAF was
down in Harlingen) I did not wait in a long line for departure. Once I
hung around quite a while post-show looking at stuff, but the other
two I was in a short departure line that went very quickly.
This may be that the CAF Airsho is not attended by a lot of fly-in
aircraft.

Ricky

[Gig 601Xl Builder]

Ricky wrote:
> Missing the CAF this year and someone asking about flying to Wings
> Over Houston got me thinking...
>
> Several years ago I had been saving all my nickles and dimes for
> months in order to rent a C-172 and fly, instead of drive, to the CAF
> Airsho out in Midland, TX. ...The Airsho was awesome as
> usual but was somewhat bitter that year.
>

Ricky you had a bad case of Getthereitis and we all know one very
possible outcome of that.

[Dave[_5_]]

> Have you ever flown to an airshow and yet couldn't land at the field
> because it was closed?
>
> Ricky


Yup. We were well before the announced closing time - but they ran out
of parking! (or so they said). OTOH we were directed to another
airport not far away, and they provided
a shuttle bus. So it was a minor inconvenience - and I didn't miss a
thing. This was at Chino, CA quite a few years ago.

On another occasion the airport wasn't closed - but there was a
definite communications problem. I started listening on the temporary
tower frequency about 30 miles away - and
heard a mess. There was all sorts of whining about not getting answers
from the tower. Oh S##t I thought - here we go again (been there, done
that before). But I continued on in -
to find, when I got there "nothing". I saw one plane landing and
otherwise a clear sky. I called the tower, got my clearance, and
landed - no drama at all. What I knew (and the others
did not) was that these folks seem to use a wet noodle for an antenna.
I had to manually break the squelch to hear them. Dunno if the howling
mob got it sorted out and landed -
or decided to go away - before my arrival.

Dave

[Ricky]

On Oct 2, 3:25*pm, Gig 601Xl Builder >
wrote:

> Ricky you had a bad case of Getthereitis and we all know one very
> possible outcome of that.

I understand getthereitis but in no way was safety compromised on this
trip. Opening the throttle wide about 15-20 min. during my descent
isn't unsafe. Beautiful day, perfect flight, I did not "push" Texas
Aero to try to quickly fix the non-starting 172 but (grudgingly) took
the 152 instead, I did ask for approach to PLEASE CONFIRM there was no
way of getting into Midland Intl. (which was the extent of my
"begging"), this flight's safety was simply not threatened unless my
emotions could possibly get in the way, which they didn't.
Your judgement of "getthereitis" is not accurate in my case but I
appreciate your warning-in-hindsight.

Ricky (Who has flown unsafely under getthereitis which I'll share in a
new post)

[Dana M. Hague]

On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 07:44:39 -0700 (PDT), Ricky
> wrote:

>Have you ever flown to an airshow and yet couldn't land at the field
>because it was closed?

Worse... I landed anyway. This was in the mid 1980's.

Two of us, me in my T-Craft and a girlfriend (who had soloed but not
yet taken her checkride) in her own T-Craft, with her mother (who was
a commuter airline pilot). It was an uncontrolled airport, and we had
no radios. Arrived late, X's already on the runway. Being young and
foolish, I figured it was OK to land on the far end of cross runway
which wasn't X'd out... I did, she did, and we left the planes down
alongside the cross runway. As we walked over to the spectator area
an FAA guy came up. Asked if we had just landed, which we couldn't
very well deny... he took down our names and certificate numbers, said
we were in a heap of trouble. Since my girlfriend didn't yet have her
Private, her mother legally was PIC; naturally as a professional pilot
(who should have known better) she was REAL worried.

Bottom line was he let us worry all through the airshow, then before
we left he found us again and said he'd forget it about it as long as
we understood we'd better not repeat the performance.

We got lucky that day.

-Dana


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[Ricky]

On Oct 7, 5:04*pm, Dana M. Hague
<d(dash)m(dash)hague(at)comcast(dot)net> wrote:

> I figured it was OK to land on the far end of cross runway
> which wasn't X'd out...

> -Dana

Well, what's wrong with landing on a non-Xed runway? Does an X on one
make the entire airport un-landable?
I mean, I know the airport is closed (for an airshow?) but legally,
isn't it o.k. to land an the runway you did?

Ricky

[Orval Fairbairn[_2_]]

In article
>,
Ricky > wrote:

> On Oct 7, 5:04*pm, Dana M. Hague
> <d(dash)m(dash)hague(at)comcast(dot)net> wrote:
>
> > I figured it was OK to land on the far end of cross runway
> > which wasn't X'd out...
>
> > -Dana
>
> Well, what's wrong with landing on a non-Xed runway? Does an X on one
> make the entire airport un-landable?
> I mean, I know the airport is closed (for an airshow?) but legally,
> isn't it o.k. to land an the runway you did?
>
> Ricky

It depends on where the X s are positioned.

If they are on both ends of a runway, it means that runway is closed. If
they are in the center of the airport, it means that the whole airport
is closed.

I had a similar experience at the Abbottsford Airshow in Canada in 1975.

They were accepting traffic on one runway distant from airshow center,
while the airshow was in progress, with no problems. You could not do
that in the US, as the whole airport would be NOTAMed as CLOSED.

Different rules for different countries!

--
Remove _'s from email address to talk to me.

[Dana]

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:51:23 -0400, Ricky > wrote:


> Well, what's wrong with landing on a non-Xed runway? Does an X on one
> make the entire airport un-landable?
> I mean, I know the airport is closed (for an airshow?) but legally,
> isn't it o.k. to land an the runway you did?

I don't remember the details, it was a long time ago... maybe the X was in
the center, probably the whole airport was NOTAM'd closed.

Or maybe the FAA guy later decided what we did was in fact legal but
didn't want to admit it.

-Dana

[Mike]

"Dana" <"d(dash)m(dash)hague(at)comcast(dot)net"> wrote in message
news:op.uir41pwpp1n3wr@hague-laptop...
> On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:51:23 -0400, Ricky > wrote:
>
>
>> Well, what's wrong with landing on a non-Xed runway? Does an X on one
>> make the entire airport un-landable?
>> I mean, I know the airport is closed (for an airshow?) but legally,
>> isn't it o.k. to land an the runway you did?
>
> I don't remember the details, it was a long time ago... maybe the X was in
> the center, probably the whole airport was NOTAM'd closed.
>
> Or maybe the FAA guy later decided what we did was in fact legal but
> didn't want to admit it.

It's possible to close only one runway and in fact, this happens quite often
at larger airports with numerous runways.

However if the entire airport has a NOTAM or TFR, you must abide by those
notices which is where 91.103 comes into play.

[es330td]

On Oct 9, 8:23*pm, "Mike" <nospam@ microsoft.com> wrote:
> "Dana" <"d(dash)m(dash)hague(at)comcast(dot)net"> wrote in message
>
> news:op.uir41pwpp1n3wr@hague-laptop...
>
> > On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:51:23 -0400, Ricky > wrote:
>
> >> Well, what's wrong with landing on a non-Xed runway? Does an X on one
> >> make the entire airport un-landable?
> >> I mean, I know the airport is closed (for an airshow?) but legally,
> >> isn't it o.k. to land an the runway you did?
>
> > I don't remember the details, it was a long time ago... maybe the X was in
> > the center, probably the whole airport was NOTAM'd closed.
>
> > Or maybe the FAA guy later decided what we did was in fact legal but
> > didn't want to admit it.
>
> It's possible to close only one runway and in fact, this happens quite often
> at larger airports with numerous runways.
>


Closing one runway happens all the time at KAHN in the Fall. When UGA
has a home game they'll close 2/20 and use it for parking and let the
9/27 primary handle all the traffic.