Fixed wing pilot, so not familiar with heliports. That said, Hudson River corridor is a really nice VFR view of NYC. Do google search, take online training, and there's a recent thread on it here. No clearance required, just follow the rules and stay in the route. Linden airport in NJ is nice for small plane ops. Helicopters use it as well for tours. There is a small landing fee, $20 or so, for small piston singles, not sure what it would be for a turbine helicopter.
Hi Tom,
Just wanted to thank you for the Linden tip and add a few pointers for others who may want to do the Hudson trip, but are terrified of doing so. First of all we both did the mandatory FAA course & exam in the morning and studied the reporting points.
In the evening we arrived at Monmouth - we thought that would be a good place to sit down and get our mindset in order before taking off and doing the Hudson exclusion. We should have picked Linden, but fair enough.
We decided on planning for maintaining 700 feet altitude for our first go at it and we went to the Hudson frequency and followed the recipe, northbound on eastside and southbound on westside, reporting as we went along. Seeing the Statue of Liberty was just as stressful as I anticipated - there were three other choppers in close vicinity, but communication and good lookout was key and we kept our distance and followed their movements. It was getting late in the day / early evening, so seeing other helicopters lights also made things safer in my opinion.
The following morning we were lucky to meet a really experienced and friendly helicopter pilot at Linden who told us how we might try to get a Bravo airspace clearance and a view of Central park as well as we headed out of the city towards CT. He was kind and called ahead to the guys he knew at Newark to give them an early warning of our intentions and check how busy they were. Note that this was in the weekend, lunchtime, and there was generally very little traffic in the air above NYC at the time & skies were blue.
The recipe he provided us with was:
1st) Check Newark ATIS and see what runway direction was in use.
2nd) When departing Linden while below controlled airspace - call up Newark and kindly request Northbound on Linden route, 1500 ft for a right turn right at the numbers (of runway in use) with a handoff to La Guardia. When later looking at the sectional I see it was genius, but I dare say we would never have come up with that one ourselves. By requesting this we would not conflict with arrivals or departures for Newark and we would be able to efficiently cross over towards Manhattan within the safety of controlled Bravo airspace.
Newark approved our request and crossing Newark at 1500 feet was astonishing for a couple of low-hour guys from Norway and we felt tremendously humble as we were allowed to do so. That humbleness generally applied to all our time in NYC airspace
After seeing the lady again, this time from the safety of 1500 feet, we received the handover to La Guardia which took place after we entered the Hudson and then we kindly asked La Guardia to make a right turn and do an orbit over Central park, which was approved, before being directed to continue out of controlled airspace by following the east bank of the Hudson. The UNGA was going on which meant that we needed to look out for an active TFR which overlapped into the southern part of central park. There was also an upcoming TFR over Yankee stadium covering the northern part of the Hudson, but that wasn't active until later in the day.
All of this seemed impossible beforehand, because the airspace/areas of responsibilities between the airports seems so incredibly overlapping for a "tourist",even though I had been studying the sectional and helicopter routes for a week. I have nothing but great things to say about NYC controllers, they were fantastic!
And we owe the pilot we met at Linden a lot of beers if he ever comes to Norway - seeing Central park was the cherry on top to an otherwise astonishing trip from Florida to Niagara Falls!
On a sidenote: My pal made it from Greenland to Iceland yesterday after battling a 45knot crosswind and is due to arrive in Norway tomorrow, about three weeks since he took off from Guatemala. 6000nm - that's incredible.
