May 4, 20197 yr A nice pair of cities to fly between in Xplane11. Gotta love Reality XP, I love the way you can program the flight from takeoff to vectors for final then you can hand fly the approach once lined up, as I end up for Midway 4R. I have landed and taken off from Midway just once, in an American Trans Air 757 on my way from Phoenix to La Guardia in '99, flew a 727 from Midway to La Guardia and had a beautiful approach into La Guardia, with downtown Manhattan off to my left. It was a funny flight my office travel agent scheduled, because I was going to JFK to train the staff at the then JFK Hilton which was converting to a Best Western. My two week trip ended up extending to four weeks so I could do additional accounting training, sales and marketing training, and housekeeping report programming for the hotel using Crystal Reports, which could mine our proprietary database. I was surprised at how small the CIO's flat was in Queens, much smaller than my Phoenix apartment, but he loved the city lifestyle. I became close friends with the Front Office manager, a man from the Middle East though I forget what country, and after 9/11 almost two years after my visit, we stayed in touch until he moved back to the Middle East with his family. Sadly the hotel I trained went out of business for a while, but friends have told me it is back in business. I ate dinner with Alan Alda in our small restaurant back in '99, but did not bother him--but in tribute I have the last episode of MASH in high def video. Also, a former bike shop owner from Napa where I used to live visited the hotel while I was there and ate the same day Alan Alda was there, he gave me the oddest look, recognizing me but not recognizing me. His shop did repairs on my bike way back when, in the 80's. Last I have mentioned before, Jet Blue was starting up and their flight attendants and pilots were at the hotel, and we'd have one or two beers together, they would buy me beer, they were just a great bunch and a predictor of the success of the airline. From my hotel room, it was adjacent to runway 13L, and I heard a roar and looked out the hotel room window just in time to see the Concorde come roaring past just before touchdown. The hotel put me in the runway facing room at my request so I could traffic spot during my time off. Bless that hotel, they upgraded my ticket home on America West to First Class, since I was flying home on Christmas Eve and only had Christmas Day at home before doing a Y2K cutover at the Best Western Space Needle in Seattle, so I did a coast to coast trip during that December in '99 and saw the Seattle Y2K celebration with the Best Western's owners on the hotel roof. John
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