It was a nice VFR Friday afternoon in early summer when I was returning home to Westchester County Airport just north of New York City. In other words, it was just about as bad as air traffic – or ground traffic, for that matter – gets in the Northeast. Summer and a Friday add up to going nowhere fast.
Before being handed off to the sector that actually controls airplanes in and out of Westchester, a New York Approach controller told me to expect delaying vectors. Not a hold, but just assigned headings that would take me in at least one big 360-degree loop. No surprise there. Vectors are more common around New York than real holds, and delays of any type are to be expected at rush hour. I pulled the power back as far as possible. No point going fast with the tail pointed at the destination.
