This March I took my wife and son on a March Break adventure from our home in Nova Scotia to New York City.

Plans and preparations were made to take our Cessna 182 into the U.S. and park it in New Jersey for the 5-6 days we were planning on staying in New York City. We had made a decision to leave tentatively on March 12 with March 11 as an alternate if the weather did not cooperate. One of my goals was to fly the Hudson River tour of the New York skyline. I had planned a stop in Portland, Maine, as our customs port of entry. The next and final stop would be Essex County airport in Caldwell, New Jersey (KCDW). I had a surprise plan in store for my passengers to fly towards the north end of the Class Bravo surrounding New York and request permission to do the Skyline Tour.

Plans were made, weather checked and our departure time was selected for Sunday, March 12. While filing my EAPIS I discovered that Portland international customs was NOTAM’ed closed. We changed our entry point to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a few miles further along. We arrived at the hangar early to preheat, pre-flight, and load up our winged chariot.

We were blessed with clear skies, cold temperatures, and a welcome tailwind to speed our flight along at 150-160 kts. Portsmouth has only a single runway with a strong crosswind to make our arrival into the U.S. a sporty one. The customs agent was friendly and made our clearance relaxed and easy. We taxied to the FBO, Airbound Aviation, to refuel both ourselves and the airplane for our onward journey.

We set out into the busy airspace of New England. The combination of ADS-B in on the iPad, our portable Zaon TCAS, and flight following had us aware and watching for traffic the whole way. The controllers were helpful and passed us along during our route. About 10 minutes or so after I was passed to New York Approach, I requested the Skyline Tour. This is an FAA-approved route that has a FLY chart that is available through ForeFlight. We were given permission to enter the Class Bravo at 2,000 feet. The procedure is to fly south on the New Jersey (west) side of the Hudson and to fly north on the east side. We were passed to Teterboro tower and were asked to fly at 1,500 feet. We passed over the Statue of Liberty and made our way back up the Hudson flying along the water’s edge with some of the towers above us as we flew north.

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Seeing the city this way was an opportunity that I would guess that many of the millions of people on Manhattan never get to have. Both Wendy and Peter were amazed that we were able to do this as general aviation airplane owners. Seeing the Freedom Tower, “the Lady,” and other landmarks from a 1,500-foot vantage point is amazing.

While I had my flight plan programmed into Foreflight beforehand I thought I was prepared for my exit and approach into KCDW. The tower controller at Teterboro KTEB had other plans for us. She had us overfly the airport at 2,000 feet to keep us out of her approach and departure lanes. Finding the airport in the city was a bit hard but with some tapping on the iPad and searching the GPS we were aimed direct for the centre of the field. This was a minor deviation of a well-planned and executed flight to another country and the most amazing city in North America. Our landing at Caldwell was a bit hectic with us on a right traffic and with left traffic coming in at the same time. The Class Delta tower controller had us do a left 360 for spacing on our downwind. We were fit in behind a slow C-172 for landing that had us doing S turns on final for more time for the 172 to get landed and do its touch and go. This was the lowest and slowest that I have ever manoeuvred our 182, something that I don’t want to do anytime soon. We landed, met a friendly line attendant who had us parked, and unloaded and got ready for our five-day adventure in the city.