Chicago Midway

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rg001

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rg001
We are planning to fly VFR (PA-28-151) from Ohio to Midway KMDW next week.

Any suggestions about the airport, airspace, tracon, ATC? Generally use flight following for trips.

Also, suggestions on FBO’s at Midway?

We need to be at McCormick Place for a few days and Midway looks closest or is there a better airport to land at?

Much Obliged. :)
 
rg001 said:
We are planning to fly VFR (PA-28-151) from Ohio to Midway KMDW next week.

Any suggestions about the airport, airspace, tracon, ATC? Generally use flight following for trips.
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Chi-App can be surely from time to time and Midway is busy airspace. Make sure you are good on the radio. MDW-App and tower guys are pretty nice.

rg001 said:
Also, suggestions on FBO’s at Midway?
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Most people suggest Atlantic

rg001 said:
We need to be at McCormick Place for a few days and Midway looks closest or is there a better airport to land at?
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Meigs would be the better airport. Oh wait!
 
Last time I went in to MDW we landed 31L and parked at Odyssey. The folks there were great, they didn't charge us a dime and gave us a crew car to get around town for the evening.
 
Flew out of Midway when I bought a Cessna 152 there a few years back. It was a pretty intimidating experience for as a low time pilot and I did a few hours with a CFI before I flew out of there solo. If you are used to flying around really busy airports and seeing much bigger airplanes landing and taxiing around you should have no trouble. ATC was great there and very patient with me when I finally flew out of there.

As an alternative you might want to consider KLGQ which is south east of MDW. I did T&G's there with the CFI and it seemed to be a nice little strip that was not near as busy. If I was to go to Chicago again, I would probably fly there.
 
Just make sure you have a little extra gas onboard beyond normal reserve amounts just incase you arrive during a rush of inbounds or outbounds and need to be vectored around for a little while.

I know that when we go into MDW or ORD atc is always keeping us to be at 250 until we are a lot closer to the runway than we really like to be. Things just run that way in Chicagoland. It can be difficult to mix the slower and faster traffic at times.

As previously stated be vigilant on the radio and be patient and you should have a memorable flight. My favorite time to fly in and out of that area is at night. The skyline downtown is really neat to look at.

Another alternative for you might be to land short of the city at Gary, IN. The drive time to downtown is about the same as from MDW. Boeing bases their corporate flight department at this airport.
 
You can also check out this thread I started a couple years back on the same subject: http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10876

Since you'll be staying a few nights, you'll probably be faced with overnight fees. OTOH, you may not need to rent a car, as you can take public transportation, either a cab or the CTA orange line.

I think that you could take the train (Metra) from Gary, though you'd need a ride to the train station.

And yes, Meigs would have been MUCH more convenient! :(
 
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