Cross-Country Flight Planning

Each PIC must, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight, including (91.103):

• (a) For IFR or any flight not in the vicinity of an airport: weather reports and forecasts, fuel requirements, alternatives available if the planned flight cannot be completed, and any known ATC traffic delays
• (b) For any flight: runway lengths at airports of intended use, plus takeoff and landing distance data from the approved AFM — or, where no AFM data exists, other reliable information for the expected airport elevation, runway slope, gross weight, wind, and temperature

Note what 91.103(a) names outright: alternatives. VFR alternates aren't just prudent — thinking through what you do when the plan fails is written into the rule.

Enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, assuming normal cruising speed and considering wind and forecast weather, to fly after that for at least 30 minutes during the day or 45 minutes at night (91.151(a)).

Treat this as the legal floor, not the plan. A commercial reserve policy is a fixed number of gallons or minutes on the ground at destination that you will not plan below and will divert to protect — typically an hour, and stated before the flight.

Four inputs, in this order:

1. Terrain and obstacles — an MEA-like floor of your own along each leg, with real margin at night
2. Glide distance — pick an altitude from which the engine-out glide reaches something survivable; over hostile terrain or water this drives the altitude more than anything else
3. VFR cruising altitudes (91.159) — more than 3,000 ft above the surface: magnetic course 0°–179° takes odd thousands + 500; 180°–359° takes even thousands + 500
4. Wind — the FB forecast decides which of the legal altitudes is fastest and most fuel-efficient

The commercial habit is to make the glide-distance question explicit. Know your airplane's glide ratio and state how many nautical miles of reach each thousand feet buys you.

The standard form covers:

• Aircraft identification and type
• Equipment suffix
• True airspeed
• Departure point and proposed departure time
• Cruising altitude
• Route
• Destination
• Estimated time en route
• Remarks
• Fuel on board
• Alternate airport
• Pilot's name/address/telephone/home base
• Number aboard
• Aircraft color

File with Flight Service (1800wxbrief.com or by phone) or through your EFB. Activate by contacting Flight Service after departure — filing alone does nothing. Close with Flight Service on arrival, by phone or radio. Search and rescue begins if you do not close it; a VFR flight plan provides no ATC separation and no radar service, only that alerting.

VFR flight plan: an alerting service only. Nobody is watching you; if you fail to close, search and rescue is initiated.

VFR flight following (radar traffic advisories): ATC has you on radar and calls traffic workload permitting. It is not separation, it is not a clearance, and it can be terminated at any time.

File and use both when the flight warrants it. And say the limitation aloud on the checkride: flight following does not relieve you of see-and-avoid, and "traffic not observed" is a routine answer.

• Radar coverage has holes — low altitude, terrain shadowing, and range from the antenna
• Advisories are workload-permitting and get dropped exactly when the sector is busy, which is often exactly when you want them
• VFR gets last priority for sequencing, routing, and altitudes
• Controllers do not know your fuel state, your performance, or your personal minimums unless you tell them
• An amended clearance or vector may be unflyable for your airplane — terrain, icing, or performance — and it is your job to say unable

Plan the flight so that losing every ATC service still leaves you with a legal, safe, and navigable plan.

The EFB is your chart, chart supplement, NOTAM, weather, and nav-log tool — and the ACS calls it out separately because dependence on it is the risk.

Before the flight: confirm the database and chart cycles are current, the device is charged with a backup power source aboard, and the brightness and thermal behavior are known — tablets shut down in a hot cockpit on the ramp.

In the flight: know what you would do with a dead tablet right now — a paper backup, a second device, or a written nav log with headings, distances, and frequencies. Set it up before takeoff so you are not programming heads-down in the pattern.

The subtle risk: an EFB makes it easy to accept a magenta line you never actually examined. Verify terrain, airspace, and obstacles on the chart yourself.

• Time, climb and descent rates, course, distance, heading, true airspeed, ground speed
• ETA including conversion to UTC — Zulu is the timebase for weather, NOTAMs, and flight plans
• Fuel required including reserve (91.151)

In flight, the same three from actual ground speed: time equals distance divided by ground speed; fuel equals burn rate times time; the 60-to-1 rule for course corrections. Be ready to recompute your reserve mid-flight when the examiner hands you a headwind (CA.I.D.S4).

The Chart Supplement for runway lengths, surfaces, lighting, services, and remarks — published every 56 days. Sectionals on their own cycle. NOTAMs for time-critical items too new to chart: runway and taxiway closures, lighting and navaid outages, obstructions, and TFRs (published as FDC NOTAMs, so a VFR pilot must check them).

Check NOTAMs during planning and again just before departure. A closed runway found on rollout is a paperwork failure, not bad luck (CA.I.D.S2).

1. Recompute ground speed for each affected leg from the new wind, then new leg times.
2. Recompute fuel burned to destination at the planned burn rate, and subtract from usable fuel aboard.
3. Compare what remains against the reserve — first against 91.151's 30/45 minutes, then against my own reserve policy.
4. If my policy reserve is broken, the plan changes now, not later: a fuel stop, a lower altitude if the wind is better there, or a different route.
5. Name the new decision point — the airport at which I will commit to stopping if the numbers have not improved — and brief it.

Saying "I'd still make it legally" and stopping there is the wrong answer at this level. Legal reserve is what you land with when everything has already gone wrong.

Exhaustion: no usable fuel remains on the airplane. A planning failure.

Starvation: fuel remains aboard but is not reaching the engine:

• Wrong tank selected
• A tank run dry with fuel in the other
• An unported tank in an unusual attitude
• A fuel selector left between detents

Starvation is the one that catches experienced pilots, and it is defeated by procedure:

• A timed tank-switching schedule written into the flight plan
• A switch confirmed by touching the selector and reading the gauge
• No tank changes below a briefed altitude on approach

• Draw the course, then walk it on the chart segment by segment: every class of airspace it enters, every SUA it clips, every MOA and MTR crossing.
• For SUA, check the charted times and altitudes and the current status — Flight Service, or the SUA status product on FIS-B.
• Decide in advance whether you will transit or route around. "I'll ask when I get there" is not a plan when the answer may be no and your fuel assumed the direct line.
• Select the navigation and communication facilities for each segment: which frequencies, which navaids, which approach control, and what you will do if the primary GPS drops.
• Check TFRs last, immediately before departure — they appear with no notice.

The core obligations you must be able to state: follow the instructions given by the intercepting aircraft, attempt to establish radio contact on the emergency frequency, notify ATC, and squawk the emergency code if you cannot establish contact — while making no sudden maneuvers.

Prevention is most of the answer: check TFRs and special security areas immediately before departure, monitor the emergency frequency when practical, use flight following in and near restricted airspace, and know the specific procedures for any SFRA on your route.

Look up AIM 5-6-2 and the intercept signals table before your checkride and drill the exact signal/response pairs and codes — the specific frequency, transponder code, and wing-rocking responses are prescribed there.

• Pilot (R1): currency versus proficiency in these conditions — night, terrain, this airplane. IMSAFE honestly, including the fatigue that comes from a day job before an evening flight.
• Aircraft (R2): inspections and AD status, actual usable fuel, the KOEL for the kind of operation, and whether performance at the destination's density altitude actually works.
• enVironment (R3): weather along the whole route not just the ends; terrain and the glide-distance question; airport elevation, runway length, and lighting; airspace and TFRs.
• External pressures (R4): the ones that make this task different from the private. The customer's schedule, the return leg, the invoice, the reputation. Name them out loud, then name the mitigation — a written go/no-go rule and a stated turn-back point decided before departure.

Pick the divert fields during planning, not in the air. For each leg, identify an airport within reach with adequate runway, fuel, and services, and write its frequency and elevation on the nav log.

Then define the trigger for each: a fuel state, a weather condition, or a clock time. When the trigger fires, you turn — you do not re-evaluate. Improvised diversions fail because the pilot spends the decision window rebuilding the analysis instead of flying to a field already chosen.

In the air: turn toward the alternate first, then compute heading, distance, time, and fuel. Aviate, navigate, communicate — in that order.