The road home

NYC taxi
Niagara Falls
Threat of Nature
Threat of Mankind

This trip was filled with adventure and beauty. The skyline in New York is the beauty that man has built. The New York skyline is like no other. There are 3 airports that are so close to the city and even though they are huge they are always at capacity. It always amazes me how close the airports are to the city. Most airports are several miles away from the major city.

The next site along the road home was Niagara Falls. The beauty that God made. It is amazing how large it is. It is next to Buffalo, New York. We are at 36,000 feet flying over. It is hard to see the magnitude of the falls at that altitude. Someplace I would like to take you to see.

One of the threats we deal with as pilots is one of nature. Snow, ice wind and as this picture show thunderstorms. It is hard to believe something so beautiful can be so destructive. The turbulence inside the storms this big can bend the wings. We also face man made threats. With the Republican National Convention here in St. Paul the security has been beefed up against the threats man makes against man. We were flying in yesterday and ATC closed the Minneapolis airport and scrambled the fighters as they had a security breach coming into the airport. The fighters approach the threat and intercept them and either lead them away from the airport or shoot them down. It is very serious business. We have been briefed on their procedures and consequences of ignoring their signals. The threat for us flying in is we do not always have fuel to hold and wait for the airport to open up. In today's fuel conservation mode every extra pound of fuel on the aircraft means it is heavier which means it burns more fuel. To save fuel they only load on the aircraft what is necessary. In this case ATC opened the airport just in time or we would have to diverted to a close airport because we were low on fuel. The new world for the friendly skies. Glad to be back.