{"id":2147,"date":"2018-06-03T17:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T23:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2020-02-13T10:51:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T16:51:16","slug":"flying-the-corridor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/?p=2147","title":{"rendered":"Flying the corridor"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 3, 2018<\/p>\n

If you know what the Houston corridor is, just skip to the third paragraph.\u00a0 For those of you not yet informed, read on!\u00a0 Houston has two big airports, Intercontinental (IAH) and Hobby (HOU).\u00a0 One sits north of downtown, the other is south.\u00a0 Big airports mean big airspaces (Class B) that are primarily geared towards big (commercial) aircraft.\u00a0 Throwing smaller, slower GA (general aviation) aircraft into the mix is not a good idea and requires the tower to grant clearances and takes attention away from the airliners.<\/p>\n

So GA aircraft would normally* stay away from the bigger airspaces by going around them.\u00a0 But because these two Class B airspaces are so big and, well, there are two of them covering the whole of Houston, going around is asking a lot!\u00a0 So, whether intentional or not, there is an east-west pathway — called a corridor — that is about halfway between Intercontinental and Hobby.\u00a0 Below is a “vector map” that shows what is considered to be the corridor.\u00a0 I used to hangar my aircraft west of Houston so, to go east, I’d have to go around the big airspace or fly through the corridor.\u00a0 Now that I’m on the east side of town, I have to fly the corridor to get to the west side.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today I wanted to fly from my home airport (which is off that map and just to the right) to see, from the air, some property that is in the northwest area of Houston (just off the map, in the top left corner).\u00a0 To do that, it makes sense to “fly the corridor” rather than go around the big airspaces.<\/p>\n

The Houston corridor is certainly convenient for east-west traffic, but there are restrictions.\u00a0 First, it’s only about 4 miles wide.\u00a0 Second, the ceiling (how high we’re allowed to fly before “breaking” into the big airspace) is only 2,000 vertical feet.\u00a0 But you don’t have 2,000 vertical feet to maneuver.\u00a0 You still have to maintain at least 500 feet (1000 feet is better) above the ground (and buildings), so at the very best, there is 1,500 feet of vertical space.\u00a0 But there’s also a new twist that’s been added in recent years… stadium TFRs!\u00a0 (TFR = Temporary Flight Restriction… basically, it’s off-limits to most aircraft.)<\/p>\n

It’s hard to make out, but slightly to the left-of-center of the red area I marked as the corridor, and slightly below it you’ll see three gray circles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Those represent airspaces that we are prohibited from entering when there is an event going on at the stadiums in their centers.\u00a0 The one at the top, as you can see, butts into the corridor for quite a ways.\u00a0 In fact, if that TFR is active, then aircraft will only have a 1-mile wide choke-point in the corridor.\u00a0 That’s 5,280 feet, and only half of that is your “lane,” or 2,640 feet.\u00a0 The corridor “box” available to a pilot suddenly got a lot<\/em> smaller… 5 times smaller, in fact.\u00a0 What’s worse is that any aircraft coming from the opposite direction isn’t required to stay in their “lane.”\u00a0 You just have to hope they do.\u00a0 Aircraft moving across your vision are fairly easy to pick out, but one coming straight at you has very little relative motion (sometimes none) and so they are hard, if not impossible, to pick out.\u00a0 When traversing the corridor, I always have my landing lights on; I hope the other aircraft do, as well.\u00a0 Anything helps!<\/p>\n

Those are the down-sides of flying the corridor but, on the up-side, saving time and fuel by cutting through Houston is only one advantage.\u00a0 The other is simply that you get a great view of downtown Houston!\u00a0 Without entering the big airport Class-B airspace, this is the closest you can get to downtown in a GA aircraft.\u00a0 Without a TFR active, you can get quite close, flying along the southern edge of the corridor, and can nab some great photos.\u00a0 On my flight on June 3rd, it was pretty hazy, but the photos are still fairly good.<\/p>\n

I both love and dread the corridor.\u00a0 Does that make sense?\u00a0 Here is the track of our flight:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And a few pictures we took along the way:<\/p>\n

\"Just <\/a>
Just northeast, looking down the streets of downtown <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Looking <\/a>
Looking north, this is Interstate-45 heading toward Dallas <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The Galleria area, with William Tower dominating <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Coming <\/a>
Coming back the other way, this is a view from the northwest <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Looking <\/a>
Looking south <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

(Note: these photos are not up to par.\u00a0 I accidentally took them 5-stops under-exposed, so they are heavily photoshopped to get them at all viewable.\u00a0 And, yes, I’m very sad about that.)<\/p>\n

Also, I’ve mentioned flying the corridor in two other Texas-Flyer stories, “The Aventura’s Last Trip<\/a>” (Sep 2005), and “Ferrying My New Plane, The Aventura<\/a>” (Aug 2002).<\/p>\n

I probably need to point out that from the FAAs perspective, there is nothing “official” about what I’ve described above as “The Corridor”.\u00a0 In other areas of the country with busy airspaces, there are official corridors, but this isn’t one of them.\u00a0 But I think you’d agree with me, looking at the sectional, that there is a de facto corridor between the two airports.<\/p>\n

Radio communications through the corridor<\/strong><\/p>\n

As far as I know, there is no special radio frequency used when traversing the corridor…. but, man, I sure do wish there were!\u00a0 (If you know of any frequency that typically pilots use, please<\/em><\/strong> enter a comment at the bottom of this page and let me know!)\u00a0 You can bet I’d have my radio tuned to that frequency, if it existed.\u00a0 The general rule in aviation is to tune your radio to the closest airport.<\/p>\n

As stated above, the closest two airports are IAH and HOU.\u00a0 Each has one or more frequencies for aircraft landing at the airport.\u00a0 As near as I can tell, they only share two frequencies:\u00a0 Unicom @ 122.950\u00a0 and “Nearest ATC” @ 124.7. \u00a0 It’s unlikely that ATC would be concerned with aircraft in the corridor, but it might not be a bad idea to tune to 122.950 while traversing that airspace.<\/p>\n

The other alternatives are the more ambiguous air-to-air frequency of 122.75, or 123.025 for helicopters.\u00a0 I say “ambiguous” because I know for a fact that both fixed-wing and helicopters (not to mention gyroplanes like mine) traverse the corridor, so which do I monitor?\u00a0 Also, many pilots use 123.45 for air-to-air.\u00a0 And it can get worse. Just do a web search for “air-to-air frequency” and you’ll see a lot of different frequencies in actual use, regardless of the official rule.<\/p>\n

So, it sure would be nice if the FAA would assign a frequency for choke points like this.\u00a0 It would make passing through the corridor much safer and less nerve-wracking.<\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0 ADS-B saves the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

As of January 2020, aircraft flying in the airspace “corridor” are required to have ADS-B\/Out.\u00a0 (Yes, there are a few exceptions, but rare.)\u00a0\u00a0 This — in theory — means that any aircraft in the area will be on your EFB navigation screen, assuming the aircraft has ADS-B\/In and the proper avionics to display traffic.\u00a0 The other aircraft will certainly be on my <\/em><\/strong>EFB screen!\u00a0 This arguably reduces the importance of having common radio communications (but, in my opinion, there should still be an assigned frequency for corridor traffic).<\/p>\n

Because of ADS-B, my “love and dread” has changed to “love and trepidation,” haha.\u00a0 It’s still a choke point so great care will always be needed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 “Normally” is, of course, a specious term.\u00a0 Many GA aircraft fly in Class B, particularly if they are either flying an IFR flight plan, or on Flight Following.\u00a0 My friend, Chuck, sent me a track showing him going right over downtown Houston.\u00a0 ATC sent him that way when he was on Flight Following.\u00a0 Another example: I was flying near Destin, FL and on Flight Following, and the ATC controller sent me\u00a0right over<\/em> the main runway at Eglin Air Force Base! Yow!\u00a0 So, I’m really talking about GA aircraft that, for whatever reason, are not currently on IFR or Flight Following.\u00a0 And, to be really thorough, you don’t actually have to be on IFR or Flight Following to get Class B clearance.\u00a0 On a quiet day, they’d probably let you traverse the airspace, but if it’s busy, they can deny your clearance request.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 3, 2018 If you know what the Houston corridor is, just skip to the third paragraph.\u00a0 For those of you not yet informed, read on!\u00a0 Houston has two big airports, Intercontinental (IAH) and Hobby (HOU).\u00a0 One sits north of downtown, the other is south.\u00a0 Big airports mean big airspaces (Class B) that are primarily … Continue reading Flying the corridor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cavalon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/corridor-map.jpg?fit=1479%2C921&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3714,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/3714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texas-flyer.com\/newblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}