Best Places to Fly to in California

[pcorman]

Here's my Best of CA Fly-In spots:
1. Best weekend: Columbia Airport -- Great campground on the field with showers next to grass strip (paved runway also).. 1 mile walk to Columbia state park, a restored gold town..

2. Best on Airport Restaurant(s) - Matthews at Paso Robles and/or Harris Ranch... and can't forget the Beach Cafe (a 1 mile walk thru the dunes at Santa Barbara airport)

3. Best Beach airport -- Oceano, cool 1950s diner with 10% off for pilots, walk to beach

4. Best camping Airport -- Kern Valley, in a valley with mountains on 3 sides... interesting approach/landing... very remote feel...

5. Best Out of the Way Airport -- Shelter Cove... flying north over the Pacific with 3000 foot mountains right down to the sea... no roads... no landing place, then all of a sudden, an airport on a flat piece of land jutting out into the Pacific... a couple of nice restaurants... oceanside hikes... very remote feel.. very pretty... wach for seafog.

6. Best Tourist Airport -- Santa Ynez airport in wine country just north of Santa Barbara (think the movie Sideways) near Solvang (a tourist destination with restaurants and nearby wineries)

 

[Jim Logajan]

Yep. The ones I talked to did. They said the SoCal TRACON is the busiest traffic control center in the world IE they get paid the highest.

As far as the FAA is concerned, ATC personnel must be retired at age 56 and no one over age 30 will be accepted for training for such a position; at least that is what the information in this link seems to indicate to me:

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ahr/jobs_careers/occupations/atc/hr_policies/emp_120/

(One could avoid the maximum enrty age perhaps by training in the military or training and working in some other country that has less draconian age requirements.)