Long XC in Cessna 150?

Would you routinely take a 700-800 one way trip in a Cessna 150 for business?

  • Total voters
    97
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It will be a great way to grow as a pilot. Weather, fuel, place to stay, food, bathroom, navigation and patience are all factored in.

Pressing to make a schedule could cost you your life. Keep that in mind.

And the things you will see. Priceless. Some windmills poking their heads through the morning fog somewhere in Illinois (a 900 mile flight in a 95 mph plane). Go for it if you have the time.
 
With the proper planning,and a good attitude. It can be fun. Also it can get pretty boring. I do a lot of cross countries and enjoy the challenge.
 
In one day is pushing it. I've done seven+ hour trips in one day in the Skyhawk and that's arduous. Breaking it into two isn't bad.
 
It'll be faster by car. If the 150 were outfitted with enough IFR gear to fly in the system it would take about the same amount of time as a car.
 
Well, I did make a 6000 mile cross country (round trip) with my brother in a Cessna 120, but I was much younger, and that wasn't a regular thing.

400 miles is a big day for me now, but my current ride isn't as big and fast as a Cessna 150...

Try it and see how it works.
 
As long as we’re showing off:

Experimental ferried from Phoenix to (almost) Copperhill, TN.

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A real wrestling match with thermals over Texas.
 
Lachlan said:
Might take you up on that. It’s at KAID Anderson, IN. Need it at 0NY0 in North Creek, NY. Might have an ATP/CFII ferry pilot lined up for this Monday. If he can’t do it are you able to find your way out of the southwest? I mean southeast? ;)
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Might be able to. What's closest comm airport up your way? I'd have to get to INDY looks like, up to Anderson, and then from your crib back to BHM.
 
I've flown from St Louis MO in a C-150 to
Oceanside, CA
Death Valley
Devils Tower
Key West
Galveston, TX
First Flight
Devils Lake, ND
I wanted to enjoy the trips, so I seldom flew more than four hrs in any one day, landed at places that let me use overnight courtesy cars and visited sights and attractions.

In 2016 I began repeating some of those destinations in a Fly Baby.
 
Where are you going and what are your alternatives if you cannot make the flight there? What about alternatives if you cannot make the flight home? What about if you get stranded halfway due to weather, mechanical issues, or just being tired and needing a rest before you continue flying?

If you can answer all those questions, then do it! Get-there-itis is the only real hazard in your plan (assuming, of course, that you make smart decisions about weather, fuel planning, and pilot fatigue when you are not rushed), so if you can counter it with a backup plan you should be fine.
 
Eastbound or westbound? Any headwind at all is going to make that very difficult.

That's probably three legs of a little more than three hours each. Including the two fuel stops and your initial preflight and final tiedown, that's absolutely all day. Eastbound in the fall, it's doable. Westbound any season, you'd have to pick your day awfully carefully. Westbound in the winter is likely a no go.
 
I logged 17 hours in one day in my 172 once; no autopilot.

That kind of sucked.
 
RyanLikesFlying said:
I am not instrument rated and I know WX is always a factor in a long trip. I’m not looking to fly 8 or 10 hours a day either due to fatigue and opportunity to make dumb mistakes.
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You kind of answered your own question right here. Unless you have a great tailwind, you simply aren’t going to do an 800 mile trip in a 150 in less than 8 hours.

The 700 mile trip I did was about 8 hours in the logbook. I didn’t mind it, but I really enjoy long all day flights like that.

Also, not being able to file and fly IFR can limit things. Doesn’t make it impossible, but how much flexibility do you have in making your travel plans? If the weather looks like crap 2 days before you need to leave, will your employer let you change plans and buy an airline ticket?

I’ve commuted in VFR only airplanes (even coast to coast in the winter) BUT, I always knew in the back of my mind that I needed to be prepared to fork out the money for a last minute airline ticket if needed.
 
800 nm is 3 three hour hops, which is about max I would wantto do in a day. In the summertine try get the first two hops done before 1, have a nice lunch and siesta,then launch at 4 to avoid the worst of the turbulence. Invest in one of the inexpensive ADSB-in recievers so you can see what is ahead of you, 3 hrs in the brief is pretty stale, Always reserve a car at Enterprise, you can cancel for free if you don't need it. My thumbrule is always 2:1 driving to flying so you can pretty much always drive if the flight is scrubbed.e.g, it takes about 8 hrs of flying to the Mississippi river and 16 hrs of driving. I fly for business in a PA38 all the time this way.
 
Quite a few years ago, i flew from KSNL to KGVL in a Skyhawk, about 750 nm. It was a glorious day, had a nice little tailwind, it was an easy one stop flight with smooth air all the way. When i got to KGVL I would have gladly fueled up and kept going. But, it could just have easily been one of those days where you were dodging storms or it was bumpy all the way, or both. If I'd been heading the other way I'd have been flying much lower to minimize the wind, it would have been bumpier, I'd have been looking at 25 knots less groundspeed and would have spent the last hour or so staring into the sun. When planning something like this you have to allow for the less than stellar days as well as the nice ones.
 
I once flew an RV12 on a ~400mi round trip flight. Roughly equivalent to a 150, less fuel.

It was fun, great experience, but I can't imagine committing to doing this on a regular basis, and this was a highly equipped low-time glass panel machine. If the weather is perfect, it's a joy, find an altitude with favorable winds and cruise along.

The other 99% of the time I think you'll find yourself not going or having to put down in the middle of no where. On my return I watched storms build, develop, catch up to me, and eventually overtake me (after I put down on a lonely strip in rural somewhere). Ground speed varied from 130kts to 60 kts. Hand flying for more than an hour is very fatiguing, turbulence significantly more so. Couple in weather, traffic, airspace, external pressures, health issues ... IR or not, it's just really not practical to commute in such a constrained AC. Maybe the airmail pilots proved that in the 30's...

One external pressure that particularly concerns me is the need/desire to get back to work at the beginning of the work week. You might find yourself really compromising your minimums under the pressure especially if you've waited out alternatives (like driving or commercial flight). If you do this you will really need to have hard, well-defined outs for no-go flights. Many factors all have to line up for it to work - every time.

My suggestion would be to design a primary commuting plan that is reliable (driving/commercial), then use the 150 on occasion when you can make it work and are up to it.
 
PaulMKE said:
Hand flying for more than an hour is very fatiguing, turbulence significantly more so.
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That is entirely based on the airplane and how well it is rigged.

I've flown my T-6 coast to coast with no autopilot and it didn't fatigue me at all - but that airplane is so perfectly rigged that I can fly it hands off. I fly a 421 at work that has no autopilot and it would be absolutely miserable to fly solo on a long cross-country. No matter how much you try to tweak the trim on that airplane, it will wander all over the place if you aren't constantly on it.

The 150 I delivered was not fatiguing at all hand-flying (although as mentioned above, turbulence can make a big difference if you are constantly banging your head off the sides/overhead).
 
The day before my instrument checkride I realized I was 7 hours short on my xc time. I flew a 150 from El Paso, tx to Santa Fe, NM and back. It was over 100 degrees and had to answer “unable” when Albuquerque approach asked me to climb to 8500’... I was by myself.

Another time I was given a 152 as a loaner plane. The fuel stick was literally a stick with some black lines drawn on it.

That is the extent of my 150 series experience
 
I've flown a 150M several times from San Antonio to Chicago and back (882nm). I wouldn't call it commuting, more like an adventure. While it could be done in a day, that day would be utterly exhausting. I always took two days as sitting in a 150, even alone, is cramped and gets uncomfortable real quick. Depending on winds which always seem to be head winds in a 150, you'll not be going much faster than the traffic on the ground although flying as the crows fly cuts some distance off driving. My trips were always during the summer and I dreaded coming down from altitude for fuel stops. I'm instrument rated but all that gets you realistically in a 150 is the ability to take off and get above a cloud deck or to penetrate a cloud deck on the way down. A 150 is not the kind of aircraft to be doing serious instrument flying down to minimums with convective activity around. I would most certainly fly commercial or drive if I had to be anywhere on a schedule.
 
Go for it. Try it once, see how it goes.
 
Stan Cooper said:
In 1980 I flew from Novato, California to Jacksonville, Florida and back in a '66 C-150 without an autopilot. It was a fun trip.

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Good thing it had wheel pants, that probably shaved three hours off the total trip time. :D
 
Thanks for all of the comments. I've been lurking and reading them all. Looking at the poll, I can see about half of you are in the Hell no category and the others are split. This type of mileage is definitely a two day trip in a 150. In thinking about it, I think this trip may be longer than I'd like to do when I need to be somewhere for work.

However, 500 miles or less is very reasonable, particularly if I launched a day early for fluff. I can get from Charlotte (KCLT) to the FL panhandle (KHRT) or New Jersey (KWRI) in a day with no problem. With that said, I will stick to 500 miles or less as a "personal minimums" and have the US military fly me commercial anything farther.

Who knows, maybe I can update this thread as I embark on these work trips/adventures!
 
Lachlan said:
It's about 5 miles from me right now, where I work, but it will be home in the morning, about 425 feet from where I sleep. ;)
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Good to hear! You sleeping in the FBO lounge, or a private strip?
 
Like I said, it'll wind up faster by car, but no where near as entertaining. The OP should go for it, he'll figure out what's what. Speaking of fitting in a 150, the scale this morning puts me at the upper range of my grad school weight from 30 years ago.
 
steingar said:
Speaking of fitting in a 150, the scale this morning puts me at the upper range of my grad school weight from 30 years ago.
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Good for you, but...

...I recall that after age 30 or so the average person loses about 10% of their muscle mass every decade.

So, as a general rule if one maintains body weight as they age, they are slowly getting fatter and fatter over the years.

That said, you’re almost certainly doing better than most. Congratulations.
 
RyanLikesFlying said:
Weve all heard it, a long XC is a series of short ones. But who’s done it or regularly does it?

I rent a 150 regularly from a friend for a very reasonable price (fuel, MX, and keeps it flying- he flys his RV8 mostly), and I have a lot of these work trips coming up where I have these grand ideas of flying myself, doing the week of work and flying home. The owner is ok with it and my employer with reimburse me for travel expenses.

With that said, would you? The 150 ain’t fast and it ain’t big. But it’s just me and a carry on. Would you do a 800 mile flight in one, each way? I’m sort of building hours (not really sure what for?) and I’ve also thought these types of trips would do that quickly.

If you would, what sorts of things should I be thinking about? I’ve done 4 hour flights (fuel and bio stop in there) in the plane a few times with no issues. I guess looking for opinions to talk me in or out of it.

I am not instrument rated and I know WX is always a factor in a long trip. I’m not looking to fly 8 or 10 hours a day either due to fatigue and opportunity to make dumb mistakes.

Ryan
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Welcome to PoA, Sam. This is a pretty old thread, but did you have a comment to make? A long cross-country in a C150 is a lot faster than driving and enduring stop-and-go traffic.
 
Pick up one of the gel foam cushions to sit on. Cheapest improvement you can make.
 
I flew regularly between Central Texas and Northern Alabama in my C-150 and only needed one fuel stop somewhere in Louisiana/Mississippi.

My route avoided all Class B,C and D airspace and the fuel planning was the only critical item.

Oh, and it was fun!
 
Stan Cooper said:
Welcome to PoA, Sam. This is a pretty old thread, but did you have a comment to make? A long cross-country in a C150 is a lot faster than driving and enduring stop-and-go traffic.
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Yes. I am planning a X/C in my C150J around the US. Hitting all corners from Florida, California, Washington and Maine. I'm excited and looking forward to the epic adventure. Sure it's slow but I can enjoy the sights better. I am Instrument rated and the 150J is IFR capable.
 
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