Originally Posted by flyingmike

30 years ago in my first few weeks of getting my IFR license in a C172 my instructor and I left N51 in northern NJ, 30 miles south of EWR, at 5:00 PM on a gloomy Tuesday evening, aka a peak hour for metro NYC airspace.

Switching from the near silent UNICOMM frequency to NY ATC during climb out I was stunned by the quantity of air traffic and complexity of managing it blew my mind. It was non stop instruction and abbreviated read back with no pauses.

So yeah looking at the FlightAware track with a hold over PHL at peak hour below 10k feet I’ll side with the pilots they had better things to focus on.

Two standout memories during my departure was ATC asking over the frequency “5298K are you with me yet” in a tone of voice clearly indicating he wished I’d picked a different day to fly through his airspace.

that and a UPS pilot a few minutes later telling approach control they’d missed their turn and asked “will that be a problem?” ATC assured them it was, indeed, a problem.

Mike