The Mass Mass Airport Tour: A Visit to All of Massachusetts’ Public Use Airports in 24 Hours

The PYOA Contest 2nd Place Story

By Sheera Kaizerman

My boyfriend Reid loves to collect things. I don’t necessarily mean physical things, but for as long as I’ve known him, he’s always had a to do list. Sure, the list has mundane things on it like “buy eggs” or “get haircut”, but that’s the easy stuff. Below the house keeping items, he’ll have bullets that say “Antarctica trip?”, “Grand Canyon rim to rim?” or “Everest climb?”. The question marks mean that the idea is there, brewing in his brain, but he’s still got to determine the logistics, figure out the timing, and find the unwitting companion to bring the idea to completion.

It’s this love for collection that has made Reid a bit of a unicorn in all of the fields he chooses to pursue. He became a 50 Completer, reaching the highest point in all 50 states at age 21, one of the youngest completers in the official Highpointer’s Club, and became the first member to achieve the newest gold standard of highpointing: all 50 states plus the six U.S. Territories. Reid is a certified Master Parachute Rigger and has collected all of the rigger ratings available, even the ridiculous ones that only a handful of people possess nowadays. Reid is also, obviously, a pilot, collecting thousands of hours to date over his (relatively) young flying career as a CFI-I and an ATP, and, most recently, collecting a DC-3 type rating because, well, why not?

It’s also this love of collection that inspired the “Mass Mass Airports Tour?”, to show up on the to do list: a visit to all 39 of our home state of Massachusetts’ public airports in 24 hours or less, way back in the summer of 2014, with me, two months away from my Private Pilot checkride, as the unwitting companion.

Our chariot for the day was Reid’s trusty Piper Tomahawk, N9873T, a lovely t-tailed two-seater trainer that I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of lovely nicknames for. N9873T had previously taken us up and down the eastern and central US, zigzagging to airshows and skydiving adventures, and now it was going to show us a view of the Massachusetts aviation scene in a hurry.

We started out getting a list of all of Massachusetts’ public use airports and roughly mapping out our course. For me as a student pilot, it was a master class in flight planning. Which airports have fuel? What about shorter runways? Those would need to be spaced out from the fuel stops. Which airports have lights? Soft fields would need to be completed earlier in the day. All available data came into play for this ambitious collection.

Our first stop was Plum Island airport, an unassuming 2,105’ paved runway by the ocean on the North Shore of Massachusetts. For as rare as Tomahawks are nowadays, we saw a sister bird sitting at the tiedowns, as if cheering us on. We landed Runway 10, turned right around at the end, and took off on Runway 28. Airport #1 of 39, done, in the books. Airport #2, Lawrence Municipal Airport, is a beautiful field with some of the nicest air traffic controllers. We landed Runway 5 and then hightailed it out on Runway 23. It was early enough that the controllers were still sleeping, so we had the place to ourselves! Airport #3, Marlboro Airport, is a barely 1700 paved runway with fences on either end of the runway. At 700 feet, the halfway point of the runway, there is a stripe of paint to indicate to pilots, “I hope you’re making progress here!”. It’s an exercise in precision, to say the least, and thankfully we’d been flying for a bit, so our ship was a bit lighter and not full of fuel!

We continued this way throughout the morning and into the afternoon, zigging and zagging throughout the state, constantly reevaluating our fuel stops and available runway landing lengths, making friends along the way as we shared our goal and our latest progress with fuelers and airport managers. Almost, if not more important than the main goal, we needed to decide which airport restaurant we’d visit for lunch (We ended up having our hundred-dollar hamburger at the amazing Airport Grille at New Bedford Airport). We explored depths of western Massachusetts I’d never ventured to unless driving straight through on the highway followed by the beauty of Cape Cod and its beachy airport infrastructure. For first-hand experience of the struggle of uneven grass strips on a very hot summer afternoon, visit Myricks, and for a beautiful ten-foot view of some of the coolest cargo planes our military has, talk to the controllers at Westover.

Finally, as the sun was beginning to set, we had just three airports left on our list: Bedford-Hanscom Field, Beverly Regional Airport, and you guessed it, the class Bravo biggie, Boston-Logan International Airport. We completed quick touch and gos at Bedford and Beverly and headed south for our journey to the landing pattern for Logan. We called ATC to let them know we were on our way. The controller got us cleared for landing 22R, advised us to watch for wake turbulence from the Southwest jet on the parallel runway, and gave the instruction to “fly maximum speed” which for us, was a thrilling 135 knots. The radio call for the jet landing behind us was “Cleared to land 22R, #2 following aircraft in front of you.” After a pregnant pause, the controller radioed again to the jet. “It’s a Tomahawk.”

We landed halfway down the runway and still taxied for what felt like a very extended length of time. We reached the General Aviation terminal, incredibly excited for the terminus of our latest collection. We’d flown long and hard, and at around 10:45 PM, checked off our 39th airport by celebrating with those famous cookies from Signature and hot chocolate from a Starbucks vending machine.

On a beautiful day, Airport #32, Provincetown. Check out the beautiful blue hues of the ocean!

WESTOVER, AIRPORT #18 – Fly on over and see some beautiful C17s along with some very friendly Air Traffic Controllers

Pittsfield, Airport #14. A beautiful aerial view of a place that gets often overlooked as “the last place to drive through in
Massachusetts before entering New York”.