Pedestrian 22: Planeview Park
Plane spotting at LaGuardia Airport
Most procrastinate going to the doctor, paying an outstanding bill, or having difficult conversations, but me? I avoid buying plane tickets. Ever since an unusually turbulent flight to Chicago three years ago, I’ve held an unshakable fear of flying.
Welcome to Pedestrian, a newsletter about walking and our everyday surroundings. I’m Alex Wolfe. Thanks to Evan, Michelle, and Larry for making this week’s newsletter possible.
Such fear has led to fixation. On any given day, I can sit in my bedroom and listen to the subtle hum of airplanes landing at LaGuardia Airport. As they descend from the sky, howling wind rushes to the fuselage producing a noise akin to someone blowing on a giant Coke bottle. A distant drone follows, which out of context could be mistaken for the sound of a whale, but instead it’s just the landing gear dropping from the airplane’s belly. Moving at speeds of up to 575 mph, these winged tubes will touch ground in less than five minutes.
Living in the center of the busiest airport system in the United States, there is no shortage of aircraft to be seen. While walking the neighborhood, my eyes meet a passing airplane and follow as it weightlessly glides through the sky. Clouds obstruct my view and I wait as the airplane emerges like a game of peek-a-boo. What fascinates me most is not that these airplanes are the size of a paperclip when looking from the ground, but inside are hundreds of passengers, often from all over the world, enjoying complimentary inflight amenities at 30,000 feet in the sky.
My mind plays tricks on me and I patiently wait for something to go wrong, yet moments pass, and my attention begins to slip. Other pressing matters come to mind, like my growing appetite, or a friend I’ve neglected to call. Lost in my thoughts, I’ve forgotten why I was looking in the sky all along.
Oh yes, the airplanes. What of them?
I read on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website that there are about 5,000 airplanes traversing the skies of the United States at any given time, but wasn’t able to visualize that number until downloading Flightradar24, an app that allows you to track any airplane across the globe. A tiny yellow icon represents each flight and includes information such as the model of the aircraft, its elevation, origin, speed, and where it’s going.
Throughout the week I’ll hear that familiar Coke bottle noise again and open up the app to find it’s just a Boeing 737 departing for Dallas or an Airbus A220 landing from Minneapolis. As I walk through my apartment I’ll periodically look out my kitchen window and see the 8:48am arrival from Ft. Lauderdale, the 2:00pm from St. Louis, or the 5:35pm from Atlanta.
After weeks of tracking airplanes from my phone, it occurred to me that I could photograph them landing from up close. Given that I only shoot with a prime wide angle lens (meaning it cannot zoom), I would have to find the closest location possible without standing on the tarmac of the airport. Plus, I didn’t want to fork over the money for a telephoto lens, but enjoyed the constraint of having ill suited camera equipment. After scouring various plane spotting websites, I discovered Planeview Park, which according to a Google review, is considered “a planespotters dream.”
Planeview Park is situated in East Elmhurst, Queens, a residential neighborhood that has served as the foreground of LaGuardia Airport for almost 100 years. Instead of being carefully planned like most parks throughout the city, is the result of a FAA stipulation that states airports must have large, clear pieces of land leading up to a runway. The park itself is rather large, but fragmented considering it consists of nine individual parcels of land running from 78th Street to 25th Avenue. It’s northern border is situated at the foot of Grand Central Parkway, which separates it from LaGuardia proper.
What makes Planeview Park so incredible is that depending on wind conditions, airplanes will glide directly above your head when landing on runway 4 (1 of 2 runways at LaGuardia). However, predicting when airplanes will actually land on said runway is easier said than done and better suited for another newsletter.
You see, airplanes land into the wind, which means they don’t always arrive facing the same direction on the same runway as I incorrectly assumed. Landing into the wind allows aircraft to make a slower approach, can shorten landing distance, and will also create drag to help slow down aircraft. I’d have to wait for a northerly wind if I was to see airplanes fly above Planeview.
So I downloaded WillyWeather, an app that monitors the wind, and for the next couple weeks obsessively checked the forecast, waiting for that northerly wind, which almost never seemed to come. And if conditions were right, I either couldn’t make the 40 minute bike ride to LaGuardia, had a prior obligation, or the sun was soon to set.
However, one Saturday morning I was in luck. I awoke from my slumber, checked Flightradar (as I always do), and discovered airplanes were landing on runway 4. It was a miracle! Flight patterns tend to change for various reasons throughout the day, so I knew this could potentially be a short lived opportunity. I quickly rose out of bed, threw on some clothes, skipped breakfast, and rode to LaGuardia as fast as I could.
It’s as if the air traffic controllers caught word of my arrival because as I reached the park, the distant lights of a flight arriving from Birmingham, Alabama appeared. As it edged closer, I positioned my camera and pressed the shutter in pure awe as the gigantic jetliner flew over the busy traffic of Grand Central Parkway. It slowly rocked to and fro while producing contrails from the edges of its wing tips. From the fence of Planeview Park you could almost make out the distant silhouette of a passenger looking out the window. Touching the ground, the aircraft’s landing gear produced a white smoke from the sudden friction.
I stuck around well into the afternoon and watched a steady stream of airplanes land. Here are a few that I saw:
While I’d like to write saying I’ve resolved my fear of flying, a steady anxiety persists, and I cautiously anticipate my next flight. I’ll continue procrastinating when it’s time to buy a plane ticket home for the holidays, as I did this year, ultimately causing me to spend far more money than I rightly should, but if you ask me to come watch airplanes land at runway 4? I’m there.
Thanks for reading,
–Alex
Brooklyn, NY
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Great essay! I live in Brooklyn in Crown Heights and my apartment windows face south. I, too, see the planes on their decent on their way to LaGuardia. I can see them if I sit on my couch while I'm watching TV - a pretty constant stream of planes. I sometimes can also see planes flying east on their way to JFK. This prompted me to download Flightradar24. It's pretty cool to get more information about the planes. While I don't have a fear of flying, it does make me feel a bit more ~connected~ to the things going around me. Thanks for the tip!