AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2012 - 12

LETTERS

FROM OUR AUGUST 2012 ISSUE

Guns, snakes, and LA airspace
Senior Editor Al Marsh ventured into some of the busiest airspace in the world to help other Easterners with their technique navigating in big airspace.

WHAT A GREAT ARTICLE! I got my license in 2004 in Nashua, New Hampshire. I flew the Hudson River Corridor, around the Statue of Liberty a couple of times, and went through the Class B in New York to Philly a couple of times. I moved to Los Angeles and continued flying out of Van Nuys. One Friday night I went to Van Nuys to pick up the airplane that I was going to fly out to Palm Springs the next morning. It was a clear evening and I took off, feeling like I was thoroughly aware of the route I was taking, with my flight plan well prepared. Just after takeoff, ATC told me to head northeast when I was planning to fly southeast. This was not an IFR flight—I’m not yet instrument rated—and I was suddenly heading in a direction I did not know. I turned southeast, watching the TAWS display, and realized that I was heading toward mountains that were much higher than I realized; my secondary display was awash with red—mountains in my flight path. I remembered what my instructor had taught me about flying into clouds: “CCC: Climb, Circle, Confess” and I figured that if I did enough climb and circle, the red would eventually remove itself from my display. At 9,500 feet I could see a corridor through the mountains and I decided to take it. The next day, my son and I took the airplane to Palm Springs. We had a lot of fun with

PROFICIENCY & EFFICIENCY

80 tEChNIquE 83 survival 88 avionics 91 Wx Watch 94 never again

Los Angeles International Airport is the fifth busiest airport in the world.
View the

vIdEO

FLy ALOng wITh author Al Marsh as he experiences “big” airspace in the Los Angeles basin.

Guns, snakes, and LA airspace
Tips for slithering through a hornet’s nest
B Y A LT O N K . M A R S H

Los AnGELEs AirspAcE makes my armpits sweat. They sweat even now, two weeks later, as I open up the LA Terminal Area Chart, torn and wrinkled from my two trips across LAX, to write this article. (An effort is in progress to make the map easier to use.) As additional research, I’m back in touch with Chief Flight Instructor Mike Lozano of Channel Islands Aviation in Camarillo, California, and he has me digging into the Aeronautical Information Manual again—just as he did during my daylong course in LA airspace survival, er, training.

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“Thank you for sharing your L.A. experience. Look at it from the bright side: The busy airspace shows aviation is alive and kicking out there. If someone learns to fly in this airspace, they won’t be afraid of any busy airspace or airport. Many pilots never go more Bruce Gruenbaum, AOPA 7552084 than 50 to 100 nm from Sammamish, Washington their home base, and never dare to land at Tragedy in Mexico a major airport. Pilots Thanks for such a great report used to California’s on such a terrible tragedy (“Tragedy in Mexico”). I am a busy airspaces won’t pilot who has flown through the be intimidated.” islands performing missions in
Axel Merk, AOPA 3572116 New York, New York

the trip until we got back to Los Angeles in the afternoon and I had to navigate my way back into the Class C around Burbank to get to Van Nuys. I got into a situation where the airplane was ahead of me, ATC was irritated with me, I was stuttering on the radio, and I completely panicked. It was the first time in 185 hours of flying time that I hated flying and could not wait to be on the ground. We landed the airplane safely, got in the car, and drove home—and that was the last time I flew there. I realized that I was not ready to cope with Los Angeles airspace without a lot more training, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. While New York/Boston is the busiest airspace in the United States, L.A. is by far the most complicated and dangerous. You really need some serious flight training to find your way around that airspace.
EvEr box cLimb? That’s not an exercise program. It’s a way to climb to an altitude in the traffic pattern that will avoid nearby airspace before departing the area. You’ll need that at Torrance to get across LAX.

NEw PROCEduREs

Pilots of LA are lucky to have the flyways, corridors, and transition routes that allow general aviation to operate above the city. Now that those complimentary remarks are out of the way, I found flying the corridors a huge challenge. After the first flight I was not sure about making the second one. Maybe I had enough material from the flight to Long Beach out of Camarillo. Yeah, that’s it. I don’t need to go through that jungle again. It took a calming lunch with Lozano, Camarillo Islands Aviation Flight School Manager Sarah Oberman, and AOPA Pilot columnist Barry Schiff to talk me into the next flight to Torrance and back. Schiff told me that I could even go from Camarillo to Catalina Island at 3,500 feet, right through the LA airspace. I thought he was kidding, like saying, “You can put your head in a lion’s mouth,” but checking the LA chart, I discovered he wasn’t kidding. It takes time and effort to master the LA airspace system, especially if you don’t know local geographic features. Look at what you have to do: talk with SoCal controllers, hold the assigned altitude exactly without an autopilot (so you can maneuver quickly), recognize visual checkpoints even if you aren’t from the area, avoid the airspace of one towered airport while landing at another, remember to change transponder codes when using the Class B tunnel above LAX, know where to look for likely

conflicting traffic, communicate position reports to other aircraft, and scan for traffic while consulting the charts and airport information on your lap. Apparently I am not the only one who has difficulty with the airspace. LAX Tower Operations Manager Jeff Cunnyngham said there are a couple of violations a week above his airport. He added that you’ll need to practice near-perfect tracking of VOR radials; get off just a little and you’ll find yourself too close to arriving or departing LAX traffic. “It takes a highly skilled pilot to know exactly where they are,” Cunnyngham said.

• Get an instrument rating. It helps with radio procedures. • Hand-fly the aircraft so that you can maneuver if you need to. • Rehearse and memorize the route, with frequencies readily available. • Learn one or two routes that work for you until they become routine. • Be spring-loaded to turn around and flee an errant marine layer with a mind of its own. • If qualified, file an IFR flight plan and avoid the visual routes.

suRvIvINg L.A.

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 81

a Cessna 172 and am planning a trip to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, probably in a Cessna 310. This tragedy doesn’t minimize my desire to continue, but gives beautiful tribute to those involved in missions.
Dr. Danny O’Keefe, AOPA 4288616 Flowood, Mississippi

My daughter Julia was in the airplane as a volunteer on the medical mission trip. This was her third trip with LIGA. I was very disappointed to see the lack of focus on the effect of this incident on the life of the three teens who were passengers in the airplane, trusting the judgment of the pilot for their safety. AOPA downplayed the extent of the injuries experienced in the crash so I would like to let you know what my daughter has suffered. She experienced a concussion and a fracture of her right orbital bone that resulted in the orbital bone collapsing into her sinus passage; titanium plate and screws were used to piece the bone back together. Her right clavicle was broken. An artery was severed in her upper right arm/shoulder in connection with a large, deep laceration that runs across her chest. She had a lacerated spleen. Her back had compression fracture of the vertebrae and completely severed spinal ligaments. Her right knee has three severed/torn ligaments that will require surgical reconstruction. She has multiple, deep lacerations all over her legs. Her left foot is broken and both ankles are sprained. She missed the last two weeks of her senior year of high school and graduated from her hospital room. We question whether she will be able to begin college (pre-med) this fall. Add to this the upheaval of our family life, loss of earnings

CAtHy GendRon

12 | AOPA PILOT October 2012

AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2012