Hudson River VFR Charting Upgrades

The FAA has released two new VFR chart insets that provide greater detail for the recently announced VFR routes along the Hudson River in the New York Class B Airspace. They can be downloaded in PDF format by going to this link and scrolling to the section labeled "New York Terminal Area and New York Helicopter Route Charts" (or you can just click on the images below - that should take you to the full sized PDF's).

It's my understanding that these "new and improved" insets will be printed on the back of the next edition of the New York Terminal Area Chart. They are substantial improvements over the charting that was provided (presumably after hurried preparation) with the last edition.

The first of these shows the VFR corridor within the Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA), the "I-don't-wanna-talk-to-nobody" route. It renders the route as shown on the reverse of the current edition, with increased detail.

I found it interesting to note that when the SFRA guidance was first published, the mandatory reporting point between the Intrepid and the Statue of Liberty was the Goldman Sachs Tower. Now, that point has morphed into "Clock" - the "Colgate Clock" on the New Jersey shore adjacent to the Goldman Sachs building. (The relatively small clock is at lower left in the adjoining photo. The Really Big building is the Goldman Sachs Tower.) Might it be that the recent notoriety of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has made the FAA nervous about incorporating Goldman Sachs, the landmark, into its procedure?

It's nice to see that there is now graphical guidance for the Skyline Route, for transiting the Class B directly above the SFRA under the positive control of the KLGA and KEWR towers. It's a nice, clean routing and I look forward to using it.

Of course, these insets are part of the continuing response to last summer's mid-air collision between a transient Piper Saratoga and a local sightseeing helicopter. I've commented on that tragic mishap before, here, and here, and here, and here. They say the the Federal Air Regulations are written in blood. These changes to the charting are part of the re-writing due to the reverberations from that tragedy...and I suspect that there's more to come.