Musings on KCDW, ILS, and WAAS

Andrew Gideon wrote:

In retrospect, I was kind of glad this occurred while wearing my selfish
hat. Both TEB and MMU are becoming increasingly unfriendly to we 100LL
burners. Pushing more charter business at CDW would, I imagine, cause the
same thing to occur there. So the lack of the glideslope is, I thought,
good for some of us.

I'm curious about the ways in which KTEB is unfriendly. I've seen postings
about how controllers can be terse with pilots, but that's typical in busy
situations everywhere. I know that the gas is a bit expensive as well, but
my little Warrior doesn't burn much. Are there other problems? Is it only
VFR planes that have problems, or is there a perceived discrimination
against IFR small planes as well?

When I flew down for a meeting in Manhattan last spring, I landed at
Caldwell/KCDW. I agree that it's a nice, friendly little airport (for
example, when I was doing a preflight just before 11:00 pm, the tower
controller saw me and called me on the radio as soon as I started the
engine, just to make sure I knew the tower was shutting down). However, it
was about 1.5 hours away from midtown Manhattan by road, not only during the
afternoon, but during the late evening (light traffic) as well. Ouch! It
felt like I'd ended up landing half way to Chicago. I spent nearly as long
driving in and out as I did flying down from Canada (and the car and driver
to get into town cost more than my fuel for the trip down). I've
pretty-much decided to try KTEB next time, just to be closer to town.


All the best,


David