San Diego, CA
Family-run Mexican on the second floor of the Montgomery-Gibbs terminal for over 40 years; elevator by the parking lot, windows and a patio over the runways. Fajitas, enchiladas poblanas, margarita flights. Open daily to 9pm; one of the few field restaurants serving dinner every night.
Named for John J. Montgomery — the San Diego glider pilot who in 1883 made the first controlled heavier-than-air flight in America (twenty years before the Wright brothers' powered flight at Kitty Hawk). Montgomery's gliders flew from Otay Mesa, where Montgomery Field is now. The airport sits in the heart of San Diego, 10 minutes from downtown and the bay. Kearny Mesa surrounds the field with corporate aviation services.
In Balboa Park, 3 nm east of KSAN. The Smithsonian-affiliated museum holds an authentic flying replica of the Spirit of St. Louis (the original is at the Smithsonian in DC), the actual Apollo 9 Command Module ("Gumdrop"), an A-12 Blackbird (predecessor to the SR-71), the first GPS satellite, and the Convair Sea Dart (the only seaplane to ever break the sound barrier — there were only five built). The 1935 Ford Building housing the museum is itself a 1935 California-Pacific International Exposition relic. Walk the International Aerospace Hall of Fame on the grounds. Easy from Lindbergh Field — Uber 10 minutes, or rent at the FBO.
The longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th century (1945-1992) is now a museum on the San Diego waterfront. 30+ restored aircraft on the flight deck — F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, SH-3 Sea King, Vietnam-era Skyhawks. Walk the steel ladders of an actual carrier. The hangar deck is enormous. From the air on approach to KSEE or KMYF, the Midway is unmistakable in San Diego harbor. Pair with a Coronado Island flyby — the Hotel del Coronado (1888) and the North Island Naval Air Station (where Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis was built and tested).
Across San Diego Bay from Lindbergh Field. Naval Air Station North Island (KNZY — military only) is the official "Birthplace of Naval Aviation" by 1963 House Armed Services Committee resolution. The first Navy pilot training school opened here in January 1911 under Glenn Curtiss's lease of the field. Lieutenant Theodore G. "Spuds" Ellyson became Naval Aviator #1. That same era produced the first shipboard landing: on January 18, 1911, Eugene Ely touched a Curtiss pusher down on a wooden platform rigged over the stern of USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay (he had taken off from Selfridge Field near San Bruno) — the first time an aircraft ever landed on a ship. Tiny Broadwick made the first San Diego parachute jump here in 1914 over a Glenn Martin pusher. The first aerial refueling and first non-stop transcontinental flight both originated here in 1923. Lindbergh tested his Spirit of St. Louis from Rockwell Field on North Island in 1927 and departed the West Coast for New York from this very ramp on May 10, 1927. From 1924 to 1936, the Navy's first aircraft carrier USS Langley (CV-1) was based here. Today three Nimitz-class supercarriers (typically Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Vinson, Abraham Lincoln) rotate through Carrier Row, visible from KSAN final approach.
Where California began — and where American glider flying took an early step. Cabrillo National Monument occupies the southern tip of Point Loma, a 422-foot bluff at the mouth of San Diego Bay. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo landed somewhere very near here on September 28, 1542 — the first European to reach what is now the U.S. West Coast. A bronze statue donated by the Portuguese government honors him at the overlook. The Old Point Loma Lighthouse, built 1855, sits at the peninsula's highest point. For 36 years its third-order Fresnel lens threw light 25 miles out to sea. The problem: at 422 feet up, the light was usually inside the fog layer. In 1891 the Coast Guard moved the active lighthouse down near the water — New Point Loma Lighthouse, still operating, 88 feet above sea level. The old lighthouse became a museum, restored to its 1880s state. The pilot bit: In 1930, Charles Lindbergh — by then the most famous aviator alive — flew a Bowlus sailplane along the Point Loma cliffs, riding ridge lift coming off the Pacific. The National Soaring Museum has designated the site a National Soaring Landmark. Hawley Bowlus, who built that sailplane, had been Lindbergh's shop foreman three years earlier when Spirit of St. Louis was assembled in San Diego at Ryan Airlines.