Learning flight planning is as important as learning to operate an aircraft. After all, the safety and success of every flight depends on the efficiency of the flight plan. Before a pilot can hope to spend hours airborne on his aircraft, he must first learn how to prepare a flight plan.
What is flight planning?
Essentially, flight planning is simply the process of creating a plan that describes the flight of an aircraft. There are two important safety aspects involved in flight planning: fuel calculation and air traffic control compliance. Fuel calculation determines the amount of fuel needed in order for the aircraft to travel safely from one point to the next while air traffic control compliance involves following the terms required to ensure a safe flight.
Fuel calculation is based on the fuel consumption of the aircraft, which is essential information for the pilot to plan how much fuel he must carry or, if necessary, where and when he should make fuel stops. For this reason, safety regulations require aircrafts to carry extra fuel. Air traffic compliance, on the other hand, is necessary in order to avoid collisions in mid-air by ensuring that the pilot keeps his aircraft within the pre-agreed route(s).
Other than the safety of the pilot, his passengers, the plane’s cargo and the plane itself, these critical areas are designed to ensure flight costs are kept to a minimum simply by planning the aircraft’s route, its speed, height and the minimum amount of fuel it can carry to sufficiently carry out a flight.
Flight planning tutorials
Flight planning is one of the most basic lessons taught in flying school. Your flight instructor can teach you the most essential things you need to learn about flight planning. However, there are web-based flight planning services you can turn to for help, in case you need tutorials and other information.
A good source of flight planning information and tutorials is AOPA.org, the website maintained by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. In addition to the various information you can get online, AOPA.org also offers an online flight planner which you can access and use in real time. You’ll have to download the program and if you need a tutorial, you can access it from the site, which explains what information you need to get and what to do with it.
FlightPrep.com is another website that offers a brief tutorial on how to use their downloadable flight planner. It will walk you through your first session in flight planning and let you know what information you need and how to use it. Other sites you can access for info and tutorials are FSBuild.com and AeroPlanner.com.