A Quiet Place: Flying to New York’s Fishers Island

Residents are protective of their 5 square miles in Long Island Sound.

Monday, October 17, 2022 at 04:34 PM ET

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For flights to Elizabeth Field's short runways, you will want an aircraft with decent short-field performance, like our Cessna 172 or the 180 sharing the ramp with us. [Credit: Jonathan Welsh]

Key Takeaways:

The author prefers traditional sectional charts for flight planning and discovering unique, remote airports, valuing their tactile nature and ease of exploration over digital tools.
They recount a recent trip to Fishers Island (0B8), detailing its history as a former military base, its current secluded atmosphere, and the peaceful, anti-tourism experience of flying there.
A humorous navigational error during the flight home, where the author misidentified an airport, challenged their pride in traditional pilotage and made them reconsider subscribing to modern digital navigation apps like ForeFlight.

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While I long ago gave up phone books and faxes, and more recently let print newspapers and catalogs go, I plan to hang on to my sectional chart subscription for the foreseeable future.

I love the tactile interaction and familiarity that a chart brings to the cockpit. There is also a nice dose of nostalgia that comes with the sectional, protractor, kneeboard, and other analog gear I purchased when I started taking flying lessons. But what I love most about the chart is its spread-across-the-kitchen-table format, which makes it easy to pick new airports to visit.