A Flight Simulator Odyssey

by Charles Gulick

What's Left?

Chart: New York
Title: LONG FNL JFK 4L
En Route Coordinates:
   Aircraft: N16972, E21047
   Tower: N17019.604, E21065.787
Altitude:
   Aircraft: 1500
   Tower: 14
Heading: 044
Time: Daylight

This approach will show you what I mean about outline-only airports. You're more or less lined up on a long final for Runway 4 Left at John F. Kennedy International. But even when the airport "blossoms," how are you to determine run-ways from taxiways? Is 4L the runway with the centerline, in which case 4R is the strip at the extreme right? Or is the centerlined runway 4R, while 4L is the outlined area that looks like it might be a runway on the other side of what looks like a divider?

Actually 4L is the runway with the centerline, but if you've never landed on it before, you'd have to be a seer to know. And if you had approached JFK from some random direction, rather than on a relative straight-in heading, you'd have to be omniscient to pick out any runway before you were virtually at the center of things.

Field elevation is 12 feet.

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