How pilots find runways in massive cities like New York

I'm sure you must have thought about this at least once in your life, especially when you were approaching a big city like New York with massive skyscrapers, buildings and lots of light. Read on to find out about how pilots deal with this situation.

First, there are very strict avenues of approach a pilot must follow when entering into any airspace where they will likely encounter other aircraft (and all commercial airlines follow strict flight paths in order to maximize fuel efficiency and schedules though there can be a significant variation on longer haul flights depending on circumstances).

Secondly, Air Traffic Control guides a pilot into their landing approach from point to point while at the same time Instrument Landing systems add an important measure of redundancy offering an up to date reading on almost all the variables required to ensure a safe approach.

Lastly, autopilot is used up until the final approach in order to allow the pilot (and co-pilot) to take care of the tertiary tasks needed to get an aircraft set up for landing.

All that being said, visibility when available can be an important asset in guiding a pilot to where he is with respect to his ultimate destination, especially to veteran pilots well acquainted with the airspace. A final point to consider is that most skyscrapers are not that high relative to the normal elevation a plane flies at in these areas and none of the buildings in the vicinity of the three major airports in New York (or around the numerous other smaller airports in the metropolitan area) could be deemed a “skyscraper”. Unless a pilot lost all instrumentation and communication with ATC, or there was a major aircraft malfunction a pilot would be well informed long before they came close to any potential collision with a building.

Here is one photo that highlights the unique stature Manhattan has as a visual kaleidoscope that is almost mesmerizing. Manhattan you can see has two very significant facts.
First: there are a lot of linear lines and perpendicular lighting, especially as you head North into midtown.
Second: you can obviously see there are dark spots around the area indicating the fact that NYC is a port city and has water surrounding most of it.

As many people will attest, whether at day or night, when you see NY upon approach via plane it is like no other city in the world. As one of my friends, who never saw a big city, said “Does it ever end???” It really seems that way when you approach and this is even more evident at night. When you normally approach a city at night you will see a significant number of lights indicating the city or suburbs and then you get to the airport that is normally located on the outskirts or just outside the city. You don’t get that sense ever when landing at one of the three major airports of NYC (JFK, LaGuardia & Newark). They are all located within the heart of the metropolitan area.

However, there are a number of advantages of the locale of each of these airports that allow pilots excellent vantage points in order to differentiate between the cityscape and the airport they are seeking.

Here are a couple of photos to give you a better understanding of the view a pilot will be seeing as he approaches the metropolitan area of New York. These are both approaching JFK and it was a flight from Asia. We come in from the north but always have to fly past and then approach from SWW.

You can see by the photos, or a map which gives a better representation, that the three have obvious landmarks being coastlines that can offer easily discernible bearing points to isolate the airports. Newark is less apparent but there is a coast that a pilot would know should be off their right when approaching from the south and the port also acts as a point of bearing.

For JFK and LaGuardia, they both lie on spits of land directly on the coast that allows pilots to easily focus on the airport by their knowledge of where the blackness of water should be depending on their heading. Then there is the added bearing point that no roads are straight in the surrounding area, the only straight lights are those of the runways. All these factors help differentiate between the airport and the surrounding cityscape.

I hope you learnt something new from this post and now understand how pilots undertake landing in a city like New York. The next time you are on a flight to New York, try paying attention to all the things I said.