Cape Cod is renowned for prodigious fog. There are likely few parts of the world that tally a higher number of actual instrument approaches by general aviation aircraft, and the system works well as long as pilots hold up their end of the bargain. I had a speaking engagement last fall in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is at the northernmost tip of the Cape. The weather promised to make the flight interesting as Tropical Storm Ophelia was working its way up the mid-Atlantic coast. A low-pressure system to the west was driving a warm front ahead of it, and the whole sloppy mess was forecast to come together at or near the Cape. The only question was when. Sounds like a lot of my planned trips, and a few get canceled.
A while back we discussed using GA aircraft for business trips and how it was absolutely necessary to have alternate travel plans if you needed to be somewhere. All the trip eggs can't be in one GA basket. A few days prior to the trip I scoped out the alternate ride — the airlines could take me to Providence, Rhode Island, or Boston, and then there would be a three-hour jaunt out to P-town. Door-to-door time was more than double what it would be by Beechcraft Bonanza but it was an ironclad alternative.
I enjoy planning trips even if they don't always get taken. It's good practice to go through the drill of gathering all the information for a trip as required by FAR 91.103. The air traffic control (ATC) system in the high-density Northeast creates IFR routings from the mid-Atlantic area to the Cape that are always circuitous. Go east of New York City or go west. I chose west to stay away from Ophelia on the well-loved Victor 93 airway. In this day when IFR GPS is becoming very much the standard for regularly used traveling aircraft, why are we still tied largely to the old airway system? Probably a rhetorical question.
AOPA Article
A while back we discussed using GA aircraft for business trips and how it was absolutely necessary to have alternate travel plans if you needed to be somewhere. All the trip eggs can't be in one GA basket. A few days prior to the trip I scoped out the alternate ride — the airlines could take me to Providence, Rhode Island, or Boston, and then there would be a three-hour jaunt out to P-town. Door-to-door time was more than double what it would be by Beechcraft Bonanza but it was an ironclad alternative.
I enjoy planning trips even if they don't always get taken. It's good practice to go through the drill of gathering all the information for a trip as required by FAR 91.103. The air traffic control (ATC) system in the high-density Northeast creates IFR routings from the mid-Atlantic area to the Cape that are always circuitous. Go east of New York City or go west. I chose west to stay away from Ophelia on the well-loved Victor 93 airway. In this day when IFR GPS is becoming very much the standard for regularly used traveling aircraft, why are we still tied largely to the old airway system? Probably a rhetorical question.
AOPA Article
