KPBI-KJFK-KPBI - New York March 3/4

This trip started early Saturday morning getting up at 4:15am to get to PBI to catch the flight to New York. This was my first trip on jetBlue and I was looking forward to the experience. As I’d checked in Friday night and printed the boarding pass, parking the card, getting through a very quiet security and getting the Starbuck coffee took very little time at all. The outbound journey was on N565JB ‘Bippity Boppity Blue’. The first thing I found very pleasant on boarding (I was in 6A) was the legroom. I’m a pretty tall person and for my knees not to touch the seat in front was really nice! We departed the gate right on time, taxied out for a Palm Beach 4 departure off runway 9L. The plane was pretty empty, so it was not long before we rotated off and headed into the still dark sky. We headed pretty far out to sea to pick up the southerly tail winds on Atlantic Route (AR) 16. Heading north, we finally turned over land over the North Carolina Outer Banks and headed up to New York and a runway 22L arrival. It was a very comfortable and smooth flight that got us into JFK 20 minutes early. Five minutes of that was wasted waiting for our gate to open up and finally we got to the gate 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

After picking up my car and digging out the trusty NYC Aviation spotter guides, I headed to LGA and Planeview Park. LGA was also using 22, so the arrivals over Planeview Park were a great first spotting in New York. The weather, while a little cold – hey – I’m from Florida – 40’s is cold – it was a very nice sunny morning. After a little while, someone else arrived with a camera with a long lens – it turned out to be Mike (Bellucciman), so we introduced ourselves and spent some good time watching and photographing the 22 arrivals. LGA finally switched 4 depatures and after a few departures, we decided to go to Howard Beach and see if any heavies were going off. There was not much action, and it was time for the European arrivals and JFK was still using 22R for the arrivals. After a couple of minutes at Burger King, we headed off to The Mounds and got some very nice arrivals – EOS, 3 North Americans (1 767 and 2 757s), Swiss, British Airways, Aer Lingus, a whole lot of Deltas (unfortunately not Habitat, but, it arrived a lot later when they switched to 31 arrivals and I was WAYYYY to far away), Cathay A340-600 are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. We were joined a little later by Eric Dunetz and Peter D and then joined a little later by 2 of NY’s finest. There was a soccer match going on and I guess someone got a little worried about these guys with their long lenses. We gave them our IDs and talked a little – the one guy couldn’t believe I’d traveled all the way from Florida just for a weekend of spotting, but, they gave us our IDs back and got back to our spotting. When JFK switched back to the 31s, we headed back to Burger King and sat there for a while. The weather was turning a little for the worse, so, after a visit back to HoBe for a few minutes, I headed back to LGA and the hotel for the evening.

Waking up on Sunday morning, it was a lovely clear morning and LGA was using 31. and unfortunately, not knowing any better, I headed to the Marina at LGA for a while. If I’d known what I later found out, I would not have wasted the time there. After a while, I headed out to Howard Beach again remembering a lot of heavies go off 31 in the morning. When there, again another person with a long lens that turned out to be Nick Vollaro. Again, we introduced ourselves and spent the rest of the morning at HoBe hoping for all that is good. The weather didn’t play along all the time but we did see some nice departures – got the ANA 777-300ER, AeroMexico 737-700 in new colors, the Emirates departure was clouded out, the Saudi 747-400 really shot off 31 and turned very early, the American 777-200 and a whole lot of others. Eventually, it was time to head to the airport to catch the flight back to PBI.

The flight back was on N571JB ‘Blue Monday’ (What a plane to fly back on!! I know what tomorrow is going to be!! :lol:)– a 31L depature, Carnarsie climb and 3 hour 12 minutes at FL 360 back to PBI.

A great weekend! I thoroughly enjoyed it – thanks to Mike and Nick for everything the two days – pity I didn’t get to meet more of the NYCA folks, but, I will be back hopefully in the not too distant future. We all share a great hobby – it’s sites like NYC Aviation that bring us from all over to meet up – and – for that site we have Phil Derner for that – Thanks Phil! Photos will follow as I edit them!!