Flight Planning and Monitoring
Flight planning questions combine navigation, fuel and regulatory requirements. Know how to build a fuel plan: taxi fuel, trip fuel, contingency, alternate fuel, final reserve and additional fuel, and the meaning of each. Understand that final reserve is a fixed time at holding consumption and is not available for diversion.
Learn to compute leg time, fuel burn and ETA from TAS, wind and distance. Be comfortable with the triangle of velocities and with the effect of wind on ground speed and heading. Understand the alternate requirement and when one or two alternates are needed.
Monitoring questions test in-flight replanning: revising ETA, checking fuel against plan, and the decision to divert. Know the significance of equal time point and point of no return.
Traps: confusing trip fuel with block fuel; forgetting to include taxi fuel; and misapplying wind to the alternate leg.
Worked example: leg distance 300 NM, TAS 150 kt, headwind 30 kt. Ground speed 120 kt; time = 300/120 = 2.5 h. At 40 kg/h, trip fuel = 100 kg. Add contingency, alternate and final reserve to obtain the required fuel.
Rule of thumb: always convert to ground speed before computing time, and keep fuel units consistent throughout the plan.