As a kid I used to watch airplanes and airliners coming into KSYR from the backyard of my grandparents’ house and if I was lucky, from the parking lot of the Northern Lights Shopping Center. My dad was never interested in landing at KSYR, mostly because he didn’t have a radio in the Piper J5-A so we couldn’t enter Syracuse’s airspace, but I have always wanted to land there in a general aviation airplane.

I’ve landed at KSYR a couple of times, as safety pilot with my friend Pat who was practicing instrument approaches to runway 28 and with my friend Chuck (who was my instructor before I had my PPL), who helped me do my instrument approach to 28.

Sunday night the winds were favoring runway 10 at Syracuse, so I decided to fly Earl and I out there to do a touch ‘n go. I then asked permission to fly over downtown before circling around Onondaga Lake and then heading home. My intent was to fly around the far side of both Onondaga and Oneida Lakes before heading to KRME, but traffic prevented me from doing this, but we still had a nice view of Downtown Syracuse.

Here’s a video of my approach and landing at KSYR on runway 10. I wondered if there was a young future aviator watching from Northern Lights Shopping Center as we made our approach, just like I did so many years ago.