Did my first flight into congested airport yesterday, mostly a nothing burger

[Salty]

So my niece needed a ride to catch a flight out of Ft Lauderdale / Hollywood yesterday so I took her down in the Mooney. Boy that place was busy. Approach was kinda like a Sun-n-fun fly in, no time to talk, just listen and follow directions (not quite, but pretty close, definitely need to be concise in your responses and no time to "check in", they know you're there).

Other than them sending us halfway to the Bahamas for final on 28L it was pretty un-eventful, but a load of fun. All in all a good experience.

 

[RyanB]

Nice. VFR or IFR?

 

[Salty]

IFR. Had to fly through Tampa Bravo and knew it would be busy down there so I filed. Good thing, VFR would have been a pain to get through the little bit of weather just before the destination.

 

[Hang 4]

How did getting from FBO to airline work for your passenger and how much for the drop off? I was thinking of doing that for some visitors that were flying out of JAX. Realize you were going to FLL, but curious anyways.

 

[Salty]

How did getting from FBO to airline work for your passenger and how much for the drop off? I was thinking of doing that for some visitors that were flying out of JAX. Realize you were going to FLL, but curious anyways.

Heh. I called first and they said there'd be a $10 landing fee and they couldn't take anybody to the terminal, but I could borrow the courtesy car and drive them over myself. So that's what I did, and it was pretty simple. However, upon leaving, I found out there was also a "ground handling fee" and "facility fee" they hadn't mentioned, so it ended up costing me $52.

 

[judypilot]

Slightly off-topic, but back when I was in IR training, and when United Airlines was still United Airlines and the pilots let us listen in on the cockpit comms, I was on a flight getting close to ORD, and I asked the flight attendant to ask the pilots if I could hang onto my head phone to listen to the comms around ORD. ORD is incredibly busy, so I thought it would be good for me to hear it all. Of course, the captain said yes, and I was able to listen all the way to shutdown. Only problem was, ORD was quieter than my home airport (TUS) on a quiet day! I commented on this as I deplaned, and the pilots just laughed and said they'd never heard ORD so quiet. So much for that idea.