The Times made my day by posting a nice article on the "Expressway Visual", my favorite route into LaGuardia.  It's a relatively-rare "visual approach", in which pilots find their way to the airport by using visual landmarks instead of GPS or other electronic methods.  As the chart indicates, pilots approaching from the south fly over Prospect Park, pass the waypoint known as "DIALS", then turn right and follow the Long Island Expressway until they get to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, at which point they make a sweeping left turn around -- or over -- Shea Stadium and line up almost exactly northwest to land on Runway 31.  (Like all runways, it's named for the first one or two digits of its compass heading -- the opposite end is necessarily referred to as Runway 13.)

It's great fun to watch from the ground, too, especially for dorks like me who like to take pictures of airplanes.  The planes' low altitude combined with their tightly banking turn makes for a dramatic flyby, and the planes go about three-quarters of the way around you as you watch.  I like to go out to the eastern end of the World's Fair Promenade adjoining Flushing Bay and watch them wheel around me.

It's almost as much fun from the plane -- there are some good YouTube videos out there, or check out this quick-n-dirty animated gif made up of photos I shot from the left side of an arriving plane:

Comments

[Keith Irwin]

Your post contains a small error: the opposite of 31 is 5, not 13.

[Vidiot]

What do you mean? Runway 31 is at a roughly 310-degree heading, and the other end is (310-180) at a roughly 130-degree heading. Similarly, the other runway is Runway 4/22, depending on which direction you're going.

[Keith Irwin]

You're right. For some reason my brain keeps wanting to have the two numbers sum to 36 instead of differ by 18. I used airline runways in an example for my databases class about a month ago, and when I first made the slides, I made the same mistake, but caught it before I showed the class. I'm not sure why my brain keeps wanting to do that when, really, I know better.

[Cheap UGG Boots]

NONO....NO MATTER THE DISTANCE....

[Pandora New Zealand]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.