West Coast flying

As I read the weather section this morning in USA Today, I was reminded of why I (along with nearly every other pilot I've met) love flying on the west coast so much.

The green you see on the right side of the country represents rain and the yellow represents thunder storm activity, neither of which is fun to fly in. As you can see from the picture, the entire east coast is or will be covered with rain or thunderstorms.

The northeast (New York, Boston) airspace is the busiest airspace in the world. Flying on a perfectly clear day in this airspace, you are almost guaranteed to be re-routed multiple times, put into a holding pattern, or be forced to decend more than 300 miles out from your destination (causing fuel consumption to rise dramatically) or all three of these combined into one nice "Welcome to New York" package.

On a bad weather day, you can expect airport closures, ground stops, long lines on the ground for de-icing, long holding patterns, and a variety of other fun and exciting tasks. These are just a few of the many factors which makes flying in the northeast easily double, if not triple the workload of flying out west.