New Yorkers: Where were/are you trained?

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Block Time

Filing Flight Plan
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Apr 18, 2021
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Block Time
Hi,
I am from NYC considering to start training.
Farmingdale, Teterboro, Essex, Morristown and Linden are all 1h+ drive during standard traffic conditions (read: jams), so they are all the same to me in terms of distance. So I would like to hear which airport you prefer.

The time driving to/from the airport will consume is a big obstacle. It means that I will basically have to spend 5 hours per lesson.
Are there any tips you can share on that?

TIA
 
First, you should purchase a NYC sectional from the feds or a pilot shop like Sporty's. There are a lot of smaller airports around W & SW of NYC and closer in than Farmingdale. Old Bridge and Solberg jump out, but there are others.

Choose the least busy non-commercial airport you can find. Particularly when it comes to touch and go practice, you will spend a lot of time waiting in line otherwise.

I've attached a screenshot of the area W/SW of NYC. The dark circles are airports. Use https://airnav.com/airports/ to research what flight schools operate out each. AirNav will also give an estimate of how much traffic you can expect at each. Xnip2021-July-14_15-10-23.png
 
Yeah, sounds like local is the way to start. I’d do something to get started, intro flight, organized ground school, whatever.
 
isn't there a train to/from penn station to mmu?
 
I live on Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. Earlier, I received my PPL at the Three Wing FBO at KBDR, and when I moved to the City I joined the Westchester Flying Club (wfc-hpn.org) flying out of KHPN, White Plains NY. On Saturday mornings KHPN was 40 minutes or less, door to door. Err.. door to plane.

-Skip
 
Unfortunately, it's a tough and expensive area to train. Where in NYC are you? From Manhattan, you can really go anywhere, but I'd recommend going west into NJ rather than east to LI. FRG has over a dozen flight schools on the field, but it can get VERY busy and you can easily waste 0.8 hobbs in line for takeoff, which will make your training very long and expensive, especially trying to work around a 9-5 schedule. If you can stomach it, driving a little further east to ISP is a good option, there's some good schools on the field, and despite being a class C, it has way less traffic than FRG. In fact, most FRG-based CFIs will take their students over to ISP for touch-and-go practice to get more landings in and avoid the landing fees for every bounce. I didn't train in NYC, but I now fly out of FRG, so if you do decide to go here I can recommend a few specific schools to look into.

If you can stomach the tolls, NJ is a good option and will likely be much less busy. I would never train at TEB, it's crazy busy with business jets, often busier than EWR/JFK/LGA these days. I don't believe LDJ has a flight school anymore, but I might be wrong about that. If you can drive a little further out, some of the smaller untowered airports have excellent schools. I flew a bit at Solberg-Hunterdon (N51), and they have extremely reasonable (for NYC) rates and theres very little traffic. Central Jersey (47N) and Somerset (SMQ) are also near there and have flight schools, although I've never flown with them. I can't speak to MMU and CDW, other than to say don't go to ATP at MMU. Hope that helps.
 
rhkennerly said:
First, you should purchase a NYC sectional from the feds or a pilot shop like Sporty's. There are a lot of smaller airports around W & SW of NYC and closer in than Farmingdale. Old Bridge and Solberg jump out, but there are others.

Choose the least busy non-commercial airport you can find. Particularly when it comes to touch and go practice, you will spend a lot of time waiting in line otherwise.

I've attached a screenshot of the area W/SW of NYC. The dark circles are airports. Use https://airnav.com/airports/ to research what flight schools operate out each. AirNav will also give an estimate of how much traffic you can expect at each. View attachment 98264
Click to expand...
The Solbergs were great people, I hope the airport is still in the family. I respectfully ask about traffic. I used to live close to N51 and traffic in NJ was never fun. Taking NJ Transit to Somerville and some sort of electric scooter to the local airports might be feasible. All of them are within 5 miles or less of the Somerville Station. One stop further out, Raritan, is closer to N51. You'll have to take PATH to link up to NJ transit. If Farmingdale is near LIRR, that may be a better option, especially from eastern NYC such as Brooklyn.
 
I did IFR at KMMU but now fly out of KCDW. Hit me up if you're looking for a recommendation for specific schools.
 
I am currently doing my ppl over at Lincoln park airport (n07) which is north of CDW. It’s a small airport and if you have a car not to difficult of a drive once you cross the GW.
Best of luck in your search.
 
I tried many of the options mentioned so far as well as some others: CDW, MMU, FRG, HPN, DXR, Andover. Nothing was perfect; they all had their challenges. FRG stood out as crazy busy.

I ended up doing most of my ratings at MGJ - just outside the Mode C veil and in the least traffic-jam-prone area … NW of the city.

HPN is also decent depending on your transit options; Metro North trains run to White Plains constantly and the airport is like a 7 min Uber in light traffic. Training flights often end up going somewhere nearby for patterns and HPN’s operating environment is just complex enough to learn something without getting overwhelmed. Commercial flights aren’t that frequent.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I fly out of N51, 39N, and 47N.
 
Thanks to all of you who replied. Every piece of info is very useful. IKYP
 
njflyer said:
Did you ever enroll?
Click to expand...
Nope. Best option still too hard to accomplish for me.
Maybe one day my employment/family/location status will change and I'll be able to consider training (in the series of: I have a dream...)
 
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