After we discovered that the Fullerton airport cafe, at which we intended to have a coffee, had been closed for a year, we took a short break, started up and headed for home at 1800' (controlled airspace base gets down to 2000' on the LAX extended centre line), via the east side of downtown Los Angeles. About here, a Malaysian 777 flew over the top of us on right base for LAX:
We continued northwards towards the Griffith Observatory (Burbank is beyond the ridge of the Hollywood Hills):
and then turned left past the Hollywood sign:
It was about this point we scared the s**t out of a thermalling California Gull - we missed it by about 10’! Lots of expensive homes down below in the Hollywood Hills:
We then headed for home (Century City and Fox Studios in the foreground):
pb84 is deliberately landing long to avoid an extensive taxy to Justice. Note that there is no grass anywhere on the airport:
Here’s our route:
Thanks to pb84 for a great flight, which apart from the scenic value, has demystified for me, the radio procedures in the Los Angeles area and has made me look very carefully at the airspace configuration and the altitude limits. It was a very useful preamble to the FAA license conversion I’m planning later this year.
We had requested flight following from Socal Approach south of LAX when transiting the very busy training airspace in that area, but that wasn’t absolutely necessary. For the whole flight, the only controllers we HAD to talk to were Santa Monica and Fullerton towers plus blind position reports while transiting the Special VFR Route through the LAX Class B and Class D airspace. Quite remarkable and of course, no landing fees. Not many places for a forced landing either!
1.3 hours - $218 (about £145)!
I would recommend this to anyone visiting Los Angeles. Just phone an FBO ( I can't specify a particular one - that would be advertising
) and tell them you want a dual sight-seeing flight and specify where you want to go. Instead of just flying round the LA Basin, you could fly to Catalina Island for lunch or coffee, or fly up the coast towards Ventura and Santa Barbara
pb84, we’ll have to do it again in Calgary or Angus, not forgetting the beer this time!