Cambridge
I was just pondering whether I had anything to write about when I got a research question as a comment – how exciting!
Sex Scenes at Starbucks is a speculative fiction writer living in Colorado. She is working on a novel which includes a scene with a jet flying out of Cambridge. She asked me if I’d ever flown in there and what size jet could land there.
As it happens, I flew into Cambridge for the first time last November (in fact, my last flying trip – uh oh, I better watch those take-offs and landings again). Cambridge City Airport is only a few miles from the University, where I was invited for dinner. Cambridge Airport is a regional airport geared towards executive travel. They see a fair number of jets and they also have two flying schools.
Cambridge runway is 1,965 metres long, long enough for a Boeing 737 or 757 or an Airbus 320/321 under normal circumstances. They have customs and immigration services so it would make a logical exit point from the EC. They also offer a “VIP Catering and Floral Service” which I thought sounded intriguing. Marshall Executive Aviation have a Cessna Citation Bravo available for “corporate travel” which is based there. Their website includes brief descriptions of the planes, including “18 passenger jets with a trans-Atlantic range” which might be useful for your research.
There used to be regular scheduled flights from Cambridge to, among other places, Amsterdam. Suckling Airways (I’m not making this up) was a husband and wife company which operated for many years from Cambridge using 18-seat Dornier aircraft. When advertising for an air-hostess, they specified a maximum height permitted of 5’2″ (158cm) so that she could stand up in the aisle.
So there you go: more than you ever wanted to know about Cambridge Airport – but maybe it’ll inspire you ;)
Excellent info, thanks! They’re on a Lear Jet Model 35 or equivalent, so I’m sure they could land and take off there fine.
Now I’m just “stretching the runway” a bit on the landing side–Grand County Airport in Colorado–but oh well…
By Grand County Airport, I’m assuming you mean Granby. The runway length there of 1,550 metres (5,095′) is just about sufficient for a Learjet 35 to land, though taking off again may be an issue at an elevation of over 8,000 ft..
The bigger problem is the Learjet’s range of 2,200 nm. The shortest (great circle) path from Cambridge to Granby is over 4,000 nm so I would expect the plane to run out of fuel somewhere off the north coast of Quebec.
Your pilots might want to consider landing on Baffin Island to refuel.
Awesome. I might just write in a mention of refueling to CMA. I don’t actually mention the 35 by name, but I feel an affection for the jet since both my husband and father in law and bro in law worked on them in Wichita years ago. (From Engineering to IT to production, if you can believe it. We had it covered.)