Only if its a former Piedmont FLA shuttle Fokker pilot. EYW runway is only 4800 feet with only VFR approaches. When its below minimums, our guys haveta circle till it clears up or stay on the ground in FLL. Water on one endof the runway, bunker and salt ponds on other. If you don't hit the piano keys at EYW, you and your passengers will go swimming, as Chandler (ASA) CRJ 700s have almost done. A lot of JS crews have also done go-arounds right before they flare in EYW... CRJs are *not* the plane of choice here in terms of operational performance. Also, decision speed for the CRJ on departure is "when you release the brakes" as one of our captains said! If you don't know FLA weather, the EYW runway, and are *very* comfortable with your airplane, then the FLL/EYW run is *NOT* for you. We've even had 1 crew return to FLL because the runway was wet & they were circling at 1500 feet (Navy approach loves us to burn gas at unreasonable altitudes)... the crew wouldn't even shoot an approach, with 5.5 on the gas... had a lil cell over Boca Chica and it "prevented" them from landing, even though ChittlePublic was landing their ERJ 135 from MCO & Gulfstream was also landing.
PSA does *very* well on the EYW run. No overnights due to exorbant EYW hotel costs.. doesn't make sense to pay $180 a night for a hotel room *per* flight crew member . Company hotels in EYW are Radisson, Fairfield Inn, Banana Bay (in that order).
Right now the E-jets are only bookable to 58 due to the short runway here.. once the MDA guys get used to the short runway & performance of the a/c I'd expect those authorizations to go up a bit.
Btw, the MCO-FLL flight is all latin connection traffic and some EYW traffic. I hope you know spanish.
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