Well, more like I rode to O'hare on Monday, but I got to ride right seat on a charter flight with my flight instructor as he flew the CEO of a local corporation down for a meeting. We flew a Cessna 310, so we were able to keep up with the big guys if we pushed it. I got to get a small taste of what charter flying is like, namely getting up at 5:00 am, wearing my fancy clothes to go flying, and making sure we had coffee and muffins for the passenger.

We started off by preflighting and pulling the airplane out of the hangar around 6:00 am, and after checking everything out and getting ready to go, we went into the FBO building to wait for the passenger to arrive. She was a little late, so we ended up waiting about an hour, but it sure wasn't the last wait we had of the day. While we were waiting, the airport owner showed up with fresh baked chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, so it wasn't a bad wait at all.  Once the passenger arrived, we settled into the airplane and taxied to the end of the runway, where we called up Madison approach to pick up our instrument clearance and then had to wait until O'hare released us and allowed us to take off. After take-off, we climbed to altitude and turned the autopilot on and sat back for a relatively uneventful half-hour flight down Chicago. Once we were within ~30 miles of O'hare, we were handed off to Chicago approach and vectored east of O'hare almost over Lake Michigan to get in line with the rest of the aircraft trying to land on runway 27R. At one point I looked out my window and saw four separate aircraft on final at once, and this was only at 8:00 am! We turned back to the airport and lined up for the runway and had to accelerate to 180 kts, faster than cruise so we wouldn't throw the spacing off too much. Even then, the big guys were flying final at 210 kts! Once we got within a few miles of the runway threshold, we slowed to ~140 kts so we could lower the flaps and gear to land.

Once we landed, we were handed off to ground control and managed to get a very easy taxi clearance from a very nice ground controller (I wasn't quite expecting that!) Luckily it only took us a few minutes to taxi from the runway to the GA ramp - other times my instructor has flown down there, it has taken over 40 minutes just to taxi less than a mile! Once we got the ramp, we shut down, got out, and took the passenger to her meeting with the FBO's crew car and settled in for a nice 6 hour wait.  The FBO was quite nice. We spent most of the day in the pilot lounge, sitting in easy chairs, watching TV, and surfing the internet on our laptops. Not a bad way to spend a day!

Around 3:00 we picked up the passenger after her meeting and got back into the airplane and got ready to go.  After calling clearance delivery for our instrument clearance, we started up and called "Chicago metering", which was a new one for me. Apparently O'Hare is so busy, you have to get your clearance, start-up and taxi to the edge of the ramp, then call metering to get a taxi clearance, then switch to ground control and wait for them to call you before you taxi. We eventually got our taxi clearance and taxied out onto and held on runway 32R and waited for the 737 on final for 27R to land before we took off. Once we took off, we were cleared to Rockford then back to Madison, and we climbed up to 6,000 ft. At 6,000 ft, we were right in the tops of the almost overcast cumulus layer, so we were cleared up to 8,000 for the rest of the flight. After that, we had a rather uneventful flight back. All in all, it was a rather fun and interesting day. I got to experience commercial aviation, had my first multi-engine experience, and got to fly into O'Hare from the front of the airplane instead of looking out the side for once!

I can't thank my instructor enough for the experience.

Here's our flight down on flightaware.com: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N4868A/history/20090810/1200Z/C29/KORD

And the flight back: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N4868A/history/20090810/2050Z/KORD/C29

And a few pictures I took with my phone on the ramp at O'Hare:

Our ride for the day:


A 747 parked a little ways down the ramp from us:


One of the endless arrivals on 27L, they were landing every 30 seconds it seemed like:

Brett_Henderson wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 7:24am:

It wasn't that much different from a landing at any other airport, very busy, but much less hectic than I thought it would be.

And the meeting was at the O'Hare Hilton, so it was only a few minutes from the FBO. 

That would make it eight conversations at least, not to mention the fact that there are not only several different approach frequencies, but several different tower and ground frequencies too!  Luckily we were able to stay with just one of each, but taxing around the airport you would have to talk to the other ground controllers as well.

My one and only trip into O'Hare was in the jump-seat of a NWA DC10, out of Seattle.  About a hundred miles out the Center guy  started getting us ducks in a row with vectors and speed control so that, on handoff, Approach could sequence our batch smoothly into the arrival flow.  Very little unnecessary chitchat - prima donnas didn't do well at ORD.  Our captain was quite explicit about our 'no way' going around 'cause it'd take the best part of an hour to get resequenced back to final.