Navigation and Cross-Country Flight Planning

Become familiar with all available information concerning that flight. For a flight not in the vicinity of an airport, that includes weather reports and forecasts, fuel requirements, alternatives if the flight cannot be completed as planned, and any known traffic delays advised by ATC. For any flight it includes runway lengths at airports of intended use, and the takeoff and landing distance data in the approved flight manual.

Teach it as the checklist it actually is, not a slogan. The mnemonic NWKRAFT — NOTAMs, Weather, Known ATC delays, Runway lengths, Alternates, Fuel, Takeoff and landing distance — maps directly onto the regulation.

Route first, then altitude, then power.

Route — consider the classes of airspace and any SUA along the way, and select navigation and communication facilities that are actually available on that route. A route that skirts a Class B shelf or clips an MOA is a route that generates workload the student does not need on a first solo cross-country.

Altitude — account for terrain and obstacles, the glide distance of the airplane, the effect of wind, and VFR cruising altitudes: odd + 500 on magnetic courses 0–179°, even + 500 on 180–359°, above 3,000 AGL (91.159). Teach the glide-distance element explicitly: choosing 6,500 rather than 3,500 over hostile terrain is a risk decision, not a performance one.

The order PHAK ch. 16 teaches, and the order you should narrate:

1. Draw the course line from departure to destination and pick checkpoints along it.
2. Choose the cruising altitude — terrain and obstacle clearance, glide distance, and the 91.159 hemispheric rule.
3. Measure total distance and leg distances with the plotter's mileage scale, using the scale that matches the chart (sectional, not WAC).
4. Measure true course with the plotter's protractor against a meridian near mid-leg. Courses change along a route because meridians converge — measure at the middle, not the start.
5. TC → TH by applying the wind correction angle.
6. TH → MH by applying variation from the nearest isogonic line. PHAK's worked example: TH 28°, variation 6.3° E rounded to 7° E, subtracted, gives MH 21°.
7. MH → CH by applying deviation from the airplane's compass correction card — +2° in that example, giving CH 23°.

Make the student say which correction is being applied at each arrow. "Wind, then variation, then deviation" is the sequence they will forget under pressure.

Teach it from the POH cruise performance table: enter with pressure altitude and temperature, pick an RPM or manifold pressure, and read out true airspeed and fuel burn. Those two numbers are the inputs to every remaining calculation — groundspeed, ETA, and fuel required — so a guessed power setting corrupts the whole nav log.

This is the step that closes the loop between planning and the airplane — students pick a cruise power out of habit and then wonder why the flight log is wrong.

The teaching points that matter:

• A higher power setting is not free. Show the student the same chart's fuel-flow column and let them see the trade in minutes of reserve.
• Charts assume proper leaning. The book number is unattainable at a full-rich mixture in cruise.
• Pick the setting before the flight and hold it. If the student changes power in cruise without reworking the numbers, the flight log has stopped describing the flight — which is the K11 point about planned versus actual.

• Time en route, climb and descent rates, course, distance, heading, true airspeed, and groundspeed
• Estimated time of arrival, including conversion to UTC
• Fuel requirements including reserve

Fuel reserve: enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, at normal cruising speed, to fly after that for at least 30 minutes during the day or 45 minutes at night for an airplane (91.151).

Teach the reserve as a floor to plan above, not a target to land on, and teach the student to compute fuel in time rather than gallons — the tanks measure gallons, but the decision is made in minutes.

Start with the legend itself — teach the student that the legend is the answer to most of their questions, then drill the navigation-relevant symbology (PHAK ch. 16; airspace symbology is Task II.G):

• Scale — a sectional is 1:500,000, so 1 inch ≈ 6.86 NM. The student must use the plotter's sectional scale, not the WAC side.
• Maximum elevation figures (MEFs) — the large blue quadrangle numbers, in thousands and hundreds of feet MSL. PHAK names MEFs as the tool for minimizing terrain and obstacle collision risk; use them to set a floor before choosing a cruise altitude.
• Obstructions — the tower symbols, the difference between MSL and AGL heights printed with them, and the added flag for a lighted obstruction.
• Terrain and contour tinting, and the elevation of the highest point on the chart.
• Airport symbols — hard versus soft surface, services available, tower versus nontowered, and the data block: elevation, longest runway length, lighting, and CTAF.
• Navaids — the VOR/VORTAC/VOR-DME boxes and the compass rose orientation.

Then the currency point (AI.II.G.K4, currency of publications, lives in Task II.G — but it bites here): sectionals are revised semiannually, so the chart in the airplane may be up to 6 months old — check the Chart Supplement and the chart bulletin.

It changes the failure mode, not the requirement. AC 91-78 covers using an EFB in place of paper; the full EFB risk discussion — overheating, battery, GPS loss, and the backup you carry — is in Task II.H. What is specific to this Task:

• The EFB does the arithmetic, so you must teach the arithmetic separately. A student who has never built a nav log by hand cannot tell you that a 45-minute leg computed as 22 minutes is wrong.
• Make the student state the assumptions the app used — winds aloft valid time, true airspeed, fuel burn, taxi and climb allowances — and check each against the POH and the actual airplane.
• Own the database currency. An expired chart database is a preflight item, not a nag screen to dismiss.
• Set it up on the ground. Route entry, briefing review, and flight plan filing happen before engine start; in flight the EFB is in the scan, not the focus.

The instructor test: hand the student the tablet with a deliberately wrong wind entered and see whether they catch it from the groundspeed.

Two families, both worth demonstrating in flight rather than describing:

• Deviation — error from magnetic fields within the airplane; corrected by the compass correction card, which is why the card must be in the airplane and legible
• Variation — the angular difference between true and magnetic north; applied when converting true course to magnetic course. PHAK ch. 16's worked form: True Course (180°) ± Variation (+10°) = Magnetic Course
• Magnetic dip errors — northerly turning error (UNOS: undershoot north, overshoot south) and acceleration error (ANDS: accelerate north, decelerate south) in the northern hemisphere

The teaching move: have the student predict the indication, then fly it and watch. Explanation plus experience beats explanation alone (AIH ch. 2).

Contents:

• Aircraft identification
• Type and special equipment
• True airspeed
• Departure point and time
• Cruising altitude
• Route
• Destination
• Estimated time en route
• Remarks
• Fuel on board
• Alternates
• Pilot information and contact
• Number aboard
• Aircraft color

Activation and closing are the part that kills the value of the exercise if skipped. File before departure, activate with Flight Service after takeoff, and — the item you must drill into a student — close it on arrival. A flight plan is a search-and-rescue trigger, not a clearance; an unclosed flight plan launches a search, and an unfiled one means nobody comes.

AI.II.I.S3 requires you to create a navigation plan and simulate filing a VFR flight plan, so know your filing method and be able to walk through it.

• Pilotage — navigation by reference to visible landmarks
• Dead reckoning — computing position from a known starting point using heading, groundspeed, and time

Teach them as a pair that cross-checks: dead reckoning tells you where the landmark should be, and pilotage confirms it is. The discipline that makes it stick is the checkpoint log — the student writes down the ETA at each checkpoint before departure and the actual time when they arrive, then computes the correction.

Which is AI.II.I.K11: planned calculations versus actual results, and required corrections. If the student never compares the two, they are not navigating; they are sightseeing.

As a procedure with a fixed order, because it happens when the student is already stressed:

1. Turn toward the new destination immediately, on an estimated heading, then refine. Time spent computing while flying the wrong way is fuel spent.
2. Note the time.
3. Estimate distance and heading — a rough measure off the chart with the thumb or the plotter is enough for the first minute.
4. Compute groundspeed, ETA, and fuel required, and compare fuel required to fuel remaining.
5. Communicate — advise ATC if in contact, or make the appropriate CTAF calls.

The completion standard for a private applicant is a divert executed promptly with a reasonable heading and estimate; the instructor standard is teaching the student to decide early, while the options are still plural.

The classic sequence, in order of increasing help: climb, communicate, confess, comply — climb for better visibility, radio and navaid reception, and a wider view; communicate with ATC or Flight Service; confess that you are unsure of position; comply with the assistance given.

Before that, the self-help steps: hold heading and note the time, look for a prominent landmark, and check the last known position against elapsed time and groundspeed to bound your search area. Teach the student that asking for help early is a normal use of an available resource — radar assistance to VFR aircraft exists for this (see Task II.H).

• Follow the interceptor's visual signals.
• Comply with all instructions until formally released.
• Do not maneuver unpredictably.
• Communicate on 121.5 MHz if not already talking to ATC (PHAK ch. 15 lists intercept procedures and the use of 121.5 among the "other airspace" items pilots must know).

PHAK ch. 14's radio signal table also gives the "SQUAWK Mayday" instruction — operate the transponder in the emergency position, Mode A code 7700.

The instructor-relevant part is prevention: intercepts of GA aircraft overwhelmingly follow a TFR or SFRA penetration, so the teaching load belongs in preflight planning — check NOTAMs, and check them again close to departure, because TFRs pop up (PHAK ch. 14).

A structured, specific assessment — not "the weather looks good." Use PAVE, which is exactly how the risk elements R1 through R4 are ordered:

• Pilot — currency, recency in this airplane and this kind of flight, IMSAFE, personal minimums
• Aircraft — airworthiness, equipment, fuel, performance for the runways and density altitude on this route
• enVironment — weather along the route and at the destination, terrain, airspace, airports available for diversion, day or night
• External pressures — the meeting, the passenger, the checkride, the rental schedule

Then state, out loud, the mitigation for each identified hazard and the condition that would reverse the go decision. AI.II.I.S4 adds a further test: recalculate fuel reserves for a scenario the evaluator gives you — so be ready to redo the fuel math with a headwind or an unexpected altitude.

Flight following is workload permitting — the controller can and will drop you when busy, often at the exact moment traffic density peaks. Radar coverage has gaps, particularly at low altitude and in mountainous terrain. And vigilance to see and avoid remains the pilot's responsibility regardless of whether the operation is conducted under IFR or VFR (91.113(b)).

Teach the student to request services and to plan as though they will not have them.

Use the telling-and-doing progression on the ground, exactly as you would for a maneuver (AIH ch. 9):

1. Instructor tells, instructor does. Plan a leg out loud, narrating each decision — why this route, this altitude, these checkpoints.
2. Student tells, instructor does. The student directs you through the next leg while you hold the pencil. This is where misconceptions surface cheaply, before the student is invested in a completed nav log.
3. Student tells, student does. The student plans the flight and briefs it to you.

The middle step is the one instructors skip and the one that does the most work: the learner organizes their thinking without simultaneously worrying about producing a correct artifact.

Good checkpoints are unique, unambiguous, and visible from the planned altitude — a town with a distinctive road pattern, a lake with a recognizable shape, an airport. Space them so a wind correction can be computed and applied before the next one, typically 10 to 15 minutes apart on a first cross-country.

Bad checkpoints: a single small town in a region full of them, a road that runs parallel to your course, a tower that will be behind you before you see it, and anything that requires the student to look down and inside for thirty seconds. Teach the student to pick a backup for each checkpoint — the feature they will use if the first one does not resolve.

The Task note explicitly permits preparation, presentation, and explanation of a computer-generated plan. Use it — and then require the student to be able to defend it:

• Where did the winds aloft come from, and what time are they valid?
• What true airspeed and fuel burn did the software assume, and does the airplane actually achieve them?
• Why this altitude? Software optimizes for time, not for glide distance over terrain or for the cloud bases.
• What is the reserve after the planned burn, and how does it compare with 91.151?

A student who can answer those has used a tool. A student who cannot has been used by one. That distinction is the instructor's contribution.

Directly. Before you may permit a student's solo cross-country, 61.93(d) requires that you have determined the student's planning is correct for the flight and reviewed the current and forecast weather and determined the flight can be completed under VFR. The per-flight endorsement in 61.93(c)(3) must specify the make and model, state that the preflight planning and preparation is correct and the student is prepared to make the flight safely under the known conditions, and state that any limitations you require are met.

So this Task is the training you must have delivered before those signatures are honest. Full endorsement mechanics — the category endorsement, the make-and-model endorsement, the per-flight planning endorsement, and the 25 NM and 50 NM exceptions — are in Task II.K.

Write the numbers, not the sentiment. Workable limitations:

• Route and airports — named, with no deviation without a phone call
• Ceiling and visibility minimums above the regulatory floor
• Maximum surface wind and crosswind component, below the airplane's demonstrated value
• Day VFR only, and a latest-return time
• Fuel — a landing reserve stated in time, above the 91.151 minimum
• A go/no-go call to you before departure and before the return leg

AI.II.K.R1 names endorsements without appropriate limitations as the risk for the endorsement Task; this is where you prevent it.

By making the decision before the pressure arrives and writing it down. Three techniques:

• Pre-commit. Before checking weather, the student states the conditions under which they will not go. Setting the threshold before seeing the data defeats confirmation bias.
• Name the pressure out loud. "I want to get home tonight" said aloud is a hazard identified; unsaid, it is a hazard operating.
• Rehearse the alternative. If the student has never actually diverted, stayed overnight, or turned around, the option is theoretical. Build one into training deliberately.

And model it. A CFI who cancels a lesson for weather, states why, and uses the time for a ground lesson teaches more about decision making than any lecture on hazardous attitudes (AIH ch. 8 on the instructor as a role model).