Arvey Fleur
Active Member
I will be flying into SNA for the first time from norcal soon. Any advice on airspace, ground ops, ATC, etc? Thank you very much!
I used to fly in KSNA to visit my daughter in Orange County. You need to take a big credit card and study the vfr corridors thru the LAX airspace. The controllers are good but will not cut you any slack if you are not prepared. I now fly into Chino and drive about 15 minutes more. Chino has an ILS if necessary, no Bravo to deal with, a friendly FBO,and much lower prices. Also, I generally don?t have to deal with the marine layer. Bruce Estes
Get a Los Angeles TAC chart. You can use the Coliseum, or Hollywood Park, Coastal route.
If you use the SFRA over LAX, SoCal will drop you and you'll have to pick them back up as you exit. Just get the new freq you'll need before you leave them.
The mini route is now often unavailable due to lack of staffing at the LAX tower.
SoCal is great to work with. As you cross Gorman southbound they'll soon ask how you want to transition - just tell them which route you want.
For pilots new to the LA basin I strongly recommend getting a TAC chart and use a highlighter to outline the Bravo boundaries. Then highlight the base altitude for each zone. What originally looked confusing now starts to make sense. They're just funneling the traffic into LAX. Spend some time studying it and you'll minimize the chance of any issues.
Another option is to go into Fullerton instead of John Wayne.I used to fly in KSNA to visit my daughter in Orange County. You need to take a big credit card and study the vfr corridors thru the LAX airspace. The controllers are good but will not cut you any slack if you are not prepared. I now fly into Chino and drive about 15 minutes more. Chino has an ILS if necessary, no Bravo to deal with, a friendly FBO,and much lower prices. Also, I generally don?t have to deal with the marine layer. Bruce Estes
I recall departing 20L years ago on a warm day in a C152. At about 50' AGL I was surprised to hear tower direct me to make immediate left turn to depart VFR to the southwest. I was barely over the buildings, but I guess they just wanted me out of the way!