How to prep for a cross-country flight
aviation

I’m not a super experienced pilot. At the moment, I’m only VFR rated, with a little IFR ground, and a little over 150 hours. (I need to go back through my logbook and add up the hours on my current page.)

I’ve done a few cross-countries with family and friends to nearby towns for breakfast or lunch, but the total Hobbs time (total clock time the engine is running) is never much more than 1.4. So I’m finally ready to go out a little further, to another state!

Each leg of the flight is only about an hour and I’ve done longer legs than that, which is good. But it really made me think about what I actually do before I go out and fly, scenarios I need to be ready for, and just the nerves that go with flying somewhere totally new.

Day before the flight

  • First, I check the weather across the time I plan on being gone in Foreflight and maybe on aviationweather.gov. I’m looking at the conditions at my home airport to see what the trend for the day is and then I do the same for my destination. If those look good, I start looking at the weather across the route I’m planning. If that looks good, then I move forward.

    I’m admittedly a fair-weather pilot right now, so if the weather makes me a little too uneasy I cancel. I’ll push my boundaries a little, but never too much.

  • When the weather checks out, I start putting checkpoints along my route. This helps me familiarize myself with the terrain and things I can expect to see. If I’m flying to an airport I haven’t been to before, I’ll usually pull it up on Google Earth. That usually leads to me scanning the whole route on Google Earth.

    This is helpful as long as you remember that it could look different based on the season of the year. I spend a lot of time on this part. I’m looking for airports along the way, good places to land in case of emergencies, and things like MEF (maximum elevation figure) on the chart.

  • After that, I start getting into the details about the flight. Now that I have an overview, I start looking at things like, what altitude I’ll fly out and back, alternates on all sides of my route, airport specifics, and frequencies along the route.

    In my mind, I take note of what the traffic pattern alititudes are, the runway lengths, which frequencies to expect, what FBO I’ll try to get a courtesy car from and any fees TFRs, and NOTAMs.

    I take a look at the A/FD for the airports too just to check if there are any special things to note, like noise abatement requirements. And I’ll look at the airport diagram to get an idea of the layout. I’ll even see if there are comments in Foreflight about the airport or FBOs.

  • Once I have those details, I work through plane performance stuff. Based on the forecasted weather, I calculate my climb performance, takeoff and landing distances, cruise speed, weight and balance, fuel requirements, and I review the V_speeds for that plane since I rent several. (Although they’re all some form of Cessna 172.)

    These numbers help me figure out how long I need to rent the plane, a rough estimate of what the Hobbs time could be (and the cost of the flight), if I’ll need to refuel before heading home, and if I should remove any alternates from my mind.

  • Finally, I’ll pull up Google Earth again and do a quick chair flight for the route including some of the frequencies I’ll switch between. I’ll even throw in a chair emergency just for practice. Now I have a visualization of how the ideal flight will go, even if something comes up.

Day of the flight

  • This is basically the same for every flight, regardless of the mission.
    • Pre-flight
    • fuel top off
    • taxi
    • run-up
    • file flight plan
    • checklist
    • takeoff
    • climb
    • switch to Departure
    • get on course
    • checklist
    • continue climb
    • level off
    • switch to Center
    • checklist
    • aviate
    • navigate
    • talk to passenger (or myself)
    • look out for checkpoints
    • check time
    • aviate
    • navigate
    • communicate
    • keep flying on course
    • checklist
    • see field
    • start landing checklist
    • switch to Approach
    • switch to Tower
    • enter pattern
    • do landing
    • exit runway
    • switch to Ground
    • taxi to FBO parking
    • shutdown checklist
    • park
    • get courtesy car
    • go to lunch
    • do all of this again but going the other way