Luftrum
United StatesTour (loop)

Kynnys US Peripheral Flight

5.0(1)
5
76 legs·8,791 nm·shortest runway 2,224 ft·82h 52m (Cessna 172 Skyhawk)
Recommended Aircraft Class
Single Engine Piston
Description

Kynnys spent 80 hours in his Cessna 172 to fly along the border of mainland United States. Replicate his feat in the aircraft of your choice!

The tour has four distinct regions. The Pacific leg is a coastal shelf flown between mountains and ocean with fog as the constant enemy and few alternates from Big Sur to the Lost Coast. The northern tier is the hard part: a Rockies crossing at Glacier, then the Hi-Line and the Prairie Potholes, then the Canadian Shield and Lake Superior — remote, sparse, and cold. The eastern seaboard is the opposite problem, threading dense controlled airspace and military restricted areas almost continuously from Boston to Jacksonville. The southern run is Gulf marsh and then, west of Del Rio, the emptiest desert in the country.

Every airport on the tour has a hard runway of at least 2,000 feet, so you'll be able to land with high performance piston aircraft or turbines too.

Good luck!

Legs
  • State: California
  • Departure closest city: San Simeon, CA
  • Arrival closest city: Monterey, CA
  • Departs the private strip William Randolph Hearst built below his castle at San Simeon so guests could be flown in, then runs north along the Big Sur coast where the Santa Lucia Range drops straight into the Pacific past Bixby Creek Bridge and the Point Sur light. There is no useful airport in between and high terrain immediately inland, so this is a coastal-shelf leg flown with an eye on the marine layer. Monterey was the Spanish and Mexican capital of Alta California and later Steinbeck's Cannery Row.
Arrival at Monterey

Activity