UPDATE: The requirement for ICAO flight plans has been extended a few times now and is still not required yet
If you’ve never filed a flight plan using the ICAO format, then now is the time to learn it! In October of 2016 the old flight plan forms will be obsolete and you will be required to use the ICAO format when filing domestic flights.
How to Fill out an ICAO Flight Plan
This video tutorial should help you through the learning process. There are a few things that are different from the way you do it now, but after watching this video you should feel more comfortable. Of course there are online flight planning services but as a student pilot or a pilot that is trying to set up the specs of the flight planning application, you still need to know what is going on to be sure you are doing it right. I hope you enjoy the video!
Here is a link where you can find the designators for each aircraft as discussed in the video:
Student Pilot Makes 2 Big Mistakes During X-Country Solo
Here’s a story sent to us by a one of our readers that you really need to pay attention to, especially if you’re a student pilot. Mistakes like this happen all the time, especially with a student pilot who has a million things going on in his or her head. Using your checklist and knowing your airplane could prevent this problem. This student almost put himself into 2 different situations that could have made his flight a very scary or dangerous one.
This story was written by Russell Butz
I was waiting for a fellow student pilot to return from his second cross country solo so I could take the plane he was using on my own cross country solo. He was running a little bit late so when he taxied to the ramp, I went out to begin my preflight inspection. As we exchanged pleasantries, he told me he experienced radio trouble on his final leg and thought he might have to enter the class Delta airspace without radio communication. Observing that the Garmin was flashing and on a hunch, he turned the alternator ON. Magically, the radios began functioning! He indicated he had not flown this particular airplane, although the flight school has a fleet of three, and did not realize the alternator switch should be ON! I informed him that it was certainly essential no matter which of the three that he flew.
There was more. I asked the person on the line to top off the fuel since I was going cross country and began my preflight inspection. After filling the right tank, the line-woman stopped briefly at the left tank before putting the cap back on and rewinding the fuel hose. Did it not need topping off, I wondered? When I asked about the refueling, the young lady who filled the right tank said that the right tank was practically empty but the left tank was almost completely full! To my shock, the previous student pilot apparently never switched tanks. Almost losing his electrical power, the guy was about to run out of fuel in his right tank! When I returned from my flight, I made it a point to tell the owner of the flight school about my experience. I don’t know who endorsed this guy to solo, but it scared me to know there was another student out there who could be as careless as that.
Advice From Flight Instructor Joe
My advice to any pilot, whether you are a student or not is to be sure that you use a checklist and know the airplane systems; know what information they are giving you and why. Knowing the systems well will help you problem solve in the event of some kind of problem. Things like this can be avoided by asking questions when you don’t understand how something works. Any time you fly a plane other than the one you have been flying, sit in it and get familiar with it. If there is something that does not look familiar to you or you are not sure of how it works, ask your flight instructor. Our e-lesson called Simple Explanations for the Mechanical Things on the Flight Training Products tab explains the things you should know about your airplane systems. I wouldn’t call this pilot careless, but he didn’t understand the systems completely and may have had other distractions which made him forget the checklist which would have reminded him about changing the fuel tanks.
Do the best you can to remember and learn from this story. Fly Safe!
I know I’ve written about this before but this is an area that will kill an inexperienced pilot or student pilot and it’s just difficult to keep reading stories about this when it can be prevented. This post is really a message from my heart. I just read a post today about a guy that was extremely lucky that he didn’t die! He made a bad decision and ended up flying into IFR conditions. This is a serious issue that must be corrected before it kills more pilots!
Why are pilots making bad choices and risking their lives?
It’s inexperience and not understanding the weather. I have written articles about it and I have written e-books about it because it is a killer. If you want to fly, you MUST know and understand aviation weather. I know it’s boring and I know you want to avoid even reading any of it but many people don’t realize that they are setting themselves up for a bad situation.
Many Pilots will eventually end up caught in bad weather!
You can minimize the risk though. I’m not talking about flying only on clear days without a cloud in the sky! This is sweeping the problem under the rug and will eventually catch up with you. When it does, you better pray. If you’ve never been caught flying in bad weather then you are in for a big surprise. My suggestion to you is to learn to understand weather better.
I am not saying this to just try to sell you something (although if I wasn’t selling anything I wouldn’t be able to afford to maintain this site and I’d have to close it), but I’m telling you because there are too many fatal aviation weather related accidents that can be preventedwith a little know how.
I have free tips on this site and a very inexpensive e-lesson on weather designed to make it very simple and easy for you. If you do better with video then here’s another option for you. It’s only $24. Isn’t your life worth that? It’s not like the typical hard to understand videos using technical terms that confuse you. It’s designed so you will feel comfortable making safe “GO, NO-GO” decisions. It’s about as easy as it gets.
If you don’t want to buy it, then don’t, but at least do the best you can to learn to understand the weather so you don’t end up another statistic. I really do care and if I could afford to give away everything to help you, I would. I just want to help put an end to all these terrible aviation accidents and help people the best I can. Please check out the aviation weather training here so you can continue to learn and grow into safe pilots so we can all enjoy this for many years to come.
You have faa.gov weather publications and can find weather charts on aviationweather.gov but do you understand aviation weather good enough to make safe, “go/no go” decisions as a pilot? General aviation pilots preflight weather planning and decision making is important to your safety.
Aviation Symbols and Abbreviations
The first step to learning weather is to learn to read the weather charts. There are many abbreviations and symbols on aviation weather charts and if you don’t know what they say, then how can you analyze the weather properly? Learning aviation symbols and abbreviations takes time but it must be done. There are many FAA weather publications out there as well as private publications addressing weather symbols, abbreviations and charts. You won’t remember every single one, especially the ones you will never use or see such as dust storm if you live in the Midwest, but you should know quite a bit.
The Problem With Weather Information
Once you have a good knowledge of aviation weather symbols and abbreviations you will be able to look at the charts on aviationweather.gov or other weather sites and know what information is on them. Knowing what information is on them and knowing what they mean or how it affects you is different. The problem is that most aviation weather books out there are all the same. They explain things very technical, boring and hard to understand. That’s great for passing a written test with boring technical questions that need an answer, but it would be nice to know what it means in real life.
Learn to Anticipate Weather
In order to make good weather decisions as a pilot, you have to know how things can affect you. You have to be able to anticipate what will happen and know whether a weather forecast could change or how reliable it is. Do you cancel, just because there is an airmet for possible thunderstorms or snow in the area? Do you fly if it’s marginal VFR? You have to know the legal limits of whether you can fly to help in your decision making but just knowing the limits isn’t good enough. If the ceiling is 2000′, are you legal to fly? You may think to yourself “I can fly as long as I’m 500′ below the clouds and I have 3 miles visibility because I’m in class E airspace”. That’s great, you know the legal limit, but is it ok to do? Can it be done safely? Should you attempt it or cancel? Most publications don’t talk to you about this.
Options to Learn to Make Safe Go/No Go Decisions
It takes years of experience, comparing actual flight conditions with the weather forecasts and hands on experience to start getting real comfortable with it but there are ways you can get a head start. You can pay an instructor $30-$50 an hour to walk you through detailed steps of analyzing weather. Start reading weather charts and forecasts and comparing actual weather to forecast weather to see how accurate it is. You should know the risks and how they affect you. These are all good ways to start. Your instructor can help you with this but there are many people out there that can’t afford to pay an instructor for more hours of training so they choose to study at home to save the money. I’m all for home study as long as you are dedicated and the material is easy enough for you to understand.
An Easy Way to Learn Aviation Weather Decision Making
I know there isn’t much out there to choose from for real life thought processes to help you in your aviation weather decision making and I see students struggle with it all the time so I have written and e-book explaining things with easy to understand, simple steps to understanding how to make weather decisions. You will learn all about different types of weather and what it means to you in real life terms. You will learn what weather is dangerous and why. Do those icing airmets or snow showers affect you and if so, how? You will learn that too. It’s written in a format to help avoid all the confusion and take out all the technical terms. You still have to know what information the chart is showing you by learning the symbols and abbreviations but the rest will become very clear if you read this e-lesson. I haven’t seen anything like it and I’m sure it will really help you to understand, make safe decisions and to feel more confident in your choices. For the price of less than 30 minutes of instructor time this is a perfect solution to learning how you really need to think to make safe weather decisions.
Only $14.95
Eliminate confusion with simple steps to easily understand aviation weather
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it for you. I’d love to hear how it has helped you, please let me know.
As you know, there are certain checks above and beyond your normal VFR checks that you have to do for IFR flying. You want to be sure that your instruments are operating correctly because you will no longer be able to see out the window when flying and will be relying on them completely to control the plane.
Pitot Heat check for IFR
For your IFR instrument check you will be checking things a little closer during your preflight. How many times have you checked your Pitot heat during a VFR inspection? When flying IFR you should be sure it heats up because if you end up in icing conditions (unintentionally of course), then the pitot tube opening could get covered in ice making the airspeed indicator useless. What’s even worse is if the pitot tube and drain both get blocked. This would cause your airspeed indicator to act like an altimeter. This means that if you were to climb slightly, your airspeed would show higher. As your airspeed shows higher (faster), you would pull up slightly to slow the plane down. As you pull up, it climbs more, showing a higher speed, causing you to repeat until you get totally confused and pull it into a stall and lose control. You need pitot heat to keep the ice off the pitot tube.
Turn Coordinator / Rate of Turn check for IFR
When you turn on the master switch, listen closely because on many planes you can hear the electric gyro to the turn coordinator start to make a whining noise as it starts to spin. As you taxi, you want to be sure that your turn coordinator is moving properly too. This is your only back-up instrument for flying straight if you lose your vacuum instruments. Without it, you will not be able to tell if you are turning. You could roll upside down and not realize it until it’s too late. It’s also good for timed turns.
Compass check for IFR
Your compass should be moving freely and filled with liquid too because it will be the only thing available to tell you what heading you are flying if you lose your vacuum.
Vertical Speed (not required for IFR)
Your vertical speed should read zero on the ground but sometimes it doesn’t. If it is off, just make a mental note of where it is and make that your zero point. You can do this because it’s not even required for IFR.
Altimeter check for IFR
When setting the altimeter to the proper pressure, it should read within 75′ of field elevation or it cannot be used for IFR. Can you imagine flying in the clouds, coming in for a landing and thinking you were 75′ higher than you actually were? There will be some error but this is the cut-off.
Gyro instrument check for IFR
Your IFR instrument check also includes your vacuum gauge. Without vacuum, you have no Gyro instruments. This means that you lose your heading indicator and your artificial horizon (attitude indicator). During idle, your vacuum may not have enough suction to spin the gyros fast enough to operate the instruments properly and may even cause a low vacuum light to show up. Just bump the power up a little or double check during run-up to be sure everything is working ok. As you taxi, your heading indicator should show turns. Your main instrument for IFR flying will be your attitude indicator (artificial horizon), so what do you do if you start the plane and it looks like the image above and is not upright and erect? The answer is to give it 5 minutes. It can take 2-3 minutes for the gyros to spin up fast enough to correct the attitude indicator but it can take as long as 5 minutes per the Instrument Flying Handbook. If it hasn’t corrected itself in 5 minutes, it should be considered unreliable for IFR flight.
Electric System check for IFR
Your electric system should be charging properly so be sure to check it, because if you lose your electric you have no way to navigate except to fly a compass heading toward the nearest VFR conditions.
Clock check for IFR
In IFR flying, you need to have a clock to be able to keep track of every second, so be sure it’s working.
VOR check for IFR
Your VOR’s have to be checked, but since you can’t really check them on the ground unless you happen to be based at an airport with a ground based VOR checkpoint, you have to check the VOR’S once every 30 days and make a log of the check. I’m not going into the specifics because they can be found in the regulations but in order to file IFR, the check must be done.
Additional IFR Checks
Lastly, you want to be sure that all your pressures and temperatures are within limits and no warning lights are on. If you have carburetor heat or alternate air, make sure they are working in case you get induction icing. You should also check both your radios to be sure that you can hear them and that the frequencies are set properly. If you have a GPS, make sure the database is current.
If you have any questions that I did not answer, then please feel free to post a comment or send me an email!
If you’ve never filed a flight plan using the ICAO format, then now is the time to learn it! In October of 2016 the old flight plan forms will be obsolete and you will be required to use the ICAO format when filing domestic flights.
