Is FLYING 23 miles to WORK worth it??

all right we're here at whiteman airport in los angeles and as you guys know i'm a professional cinematographer and today i'm going to supervise a color grading session for a part of a documentary that i shot it's a true crime documentary that just premiered on netflix it's called why did you kill me and it's about a devastated family who uses social media to track down the killers of a young woman part that i shot was a bunch of recreations of a crime and i shot a bunch of miniatures with like motion control stuff i usually shoot commercials but this was an interesting and technically challenging project to work on so we're going to do the final color correction and color grade on that material and uh the session is in santa monica traffic on the 405 freeway is notoriously bad so i'm going to skip that traffic and i'm going to fly you're probably curious like i was will i save time flying versus driving the short hop and how much more expensive than driving would this be stay tuned to the end to find out i'll break it all down i brought my little scooter along with me i'm gonna hop on that go around santa monica and make it over the session do a little bit of time hop in the departure east of five three approved only one two clicks take off clear for takeoff on runway one two right downwind departure east of the five freeway 631 bravo whiskey a lot of people ask me how much prior permission do you need to fly your plane around la like this i mean can you just fly wherever and whenever you want and the basic oversimplified answer thanks to general aviation advocacy groups like aopa and the eaa is yes you can fly just about anywhere you want at any time and in good weather you don't need advanced permission at all you just radio the tower before you enter their airspace this short 23 mile hop from the valley over the hill takes me through van nuys airspace which was particularly busy today november zero whiskey rummy i'm gonna get you out momentarily okay nice tower cherokee 631 broad whiskey five four five interchange southbound transition all right six three one bravo whiskey vanished our transition approve and i thought timmeter3001 3001. the left traffic pattern for van nuys runway 16 left commonly used by student pilots means that there are a lot of planes coming in the opposite direction for my southbound transition we're looking at train at godzilla jk turn left based immediately traffic is uh 12 o'clock and quarter mile turn left immediately i think left 70 number one bravo whiskey remain on the east side of the 4053 for our downwind traffic oh yeah east side of four or five that's where i'm at i saw him on brad whiskey uh five remain on the west side of the 405 freeway for opposite direction traffic traffic inside will stay on the west side of the four five three zero two five summer zero whiskey romeo clear for immediate takeoff a lot of guys over here that is in the pattern it's kind of a good thing i know that you're supposed to stay on the east side of the freeway because it probably would have been too late at that point that guy was pretty close and uh i knew what he was doing i'm definitely surprised he didn't give me an altitude restriction or a squat code they usually do transitioning van nuys here but i think that's probably because he's really busy van nuys usually restricts low altitude transitioning aircraft to below 1800 feet since we cross right through burbank's ils runway 8 approach path i'll clear the ils now so i can start climbing i tried to let me get you going shortly by the way if you like behind the scenes type stuff or want my expert tips on gopro settings and mounts to film your own flights head on over to the socal flying monkey patreon site for lots of that type of content patreon.com socalflyingmonkey we're coming out of their airspace and going to transition over to santa monica he should hand us off any minute i'll put the santa monica frequency across broadway 16 left at charlie runway one six right line up on weight i'll climb to just under the um the burbank charlie here under three thousand i'm gonna do it lined up for the left all right we're out of the united states so he's so busy santa monica tower cherokee 631 bravo whiskey sepulveda pass inbound with sierra number six three one bravo whiskey santa monica tower interrupt base runway two one squawk zero two three zero right base runway two one zero two three zero one probably all right so he wants us on a right base two one well there's the traffic there was no traffic today this is unusual usually those freeways are jammed in the morning man the views here are awesome i got downtown over there we got the beaches and the santa monica mountains over here and i can see westwood and uh it's just beautiful number one bravo whiskey wins two one zero at niner runway two one cleared to land clear to land on railway two one six three one bravo whiskey i'm just going to follow that freeway and enter the right base for runway 2-1 pretty much over the 405-10 freeway interchange over there and i'll slowly descend down to pattern altitude we got a direct headwind of nine knots so that should be really nice we're at pattern altitude here and start descending even more on this base leg 500. i love making this turn to final at santa monica where the runway and the beach come into full view through the windscreen yes undercarriage make sure power seatbelt safety items switches we got the gump's check is done looking a little habit this airplane really likes to descend so all right oh yeah it's looking really [Music] good [Music] yes love flying into santa monica oh man that is that was so fun and awesome landing at santa monica is just it's just such a great place to to come land even though there's a landing fee and they shorten the runway it's kind of still worth it and you're landing towards the ocean and you got the ocean breeze when you land and open the window santa monica is pretty awesome and i love making that hop over here so this trip was extremely impractical to fly my own airplane just a few miles doesn't really make any sense but i'm thinking about this a lot and sometimes aviation in your life won't make any practical sense but it's so much fun and if you're passionate about it it's just totally worth it i i know a lot of people when they're buying an airplane they worry about like how much money they're putting in how much money they're gonna get out of it and i never really thought of it that way as like a return on investment the return on the investment is the fun that you have with aviation no matter how you're going about it if you're if you have your own plan you're part of a flying club or if you rent sometimes you you can't ju you can't think about it just in terms of numbers and practicality even though that is a lot of times how my mind thinks sometimes you have to throw that stuff completely out the window and just do something because because it's super fun but for all you numbers people like me here's how it breaks down driving from my house to santa monica would take anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour so let's just say one hour for worst case scenario but to fly to santa monica all i have to do is drive to the airport pre-flight the plane taxi the runway and do the run up fly to santa monica taxi park secure the plane and scoot her to the color session driving one way we'll use about one gallon of gas that cost 3.75 flying will use 3.8 gallons at about 420 a gallon for 16 dollars plus the santa monica landing fee for another 18 or so which averages to a one-way cost of 25 so flying takes about half an hour longer and costs about 21 dollars more each way if the car traffic is bad like i said it doesn't really make any sense but it sure is fun thanks for coming along on the journey with me

Channel: SoCal Flying Monkey

Views: 159,585

Rating: 4.9542737 out of 5

Keywords: flying to work everyday, flying to commute, flying to work every week, flying airplane to work, flying airplanes to work, flying airplanes to commute, flying airplane to beat traffic, is flying your own plane faster than driving, general aviation, socal flying, santa monica airport landing, flying over the getty center

Id: 4sh3DU9sD_w

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021