Ceilings Are 1,500

An alternate is required. The destination forecast ceiling of 1,500 feet is below the 2,000-foot threshold, so the dispatch exception does not apply - file and plan an alternate.

Does the alternate qualify? The alternate has a non-precision approach, so the planning standard is a forecast ceiling of at least 800 feet and visibility of at least 2 statute miles at the estimated arrival time. Scattered at 800 meets the ceiling requirement exactly; 2 miles meets visibility exactly. It is legal, and it is legal by zero margin.

That margin is the actual decision:

• "Exactly at minimums" means the first forecast revision puts you out of compliance. A temporarily lower layer or a bit of fog and you have no legal alternate at all.
• A single VOR approach at a field 25 miles away, at night, with no second option nearby, leaves nothing to divert to if that approach is unusable on arrival.
• Confirm the alternate can be reached from the minimum en route altitude and that a missed approach there is survivable, not just that the numbers add up.

"VMC on top" does not exempt the flight - it describes a cruise condition, not an arrival condition. If you cannot identify a better alternate, the honest answer is a later departure or a different destination.

Fuel required: the flight must carry fuel to the destination, then to the alternate, then 45 minutes at normal cruise.

• Destination: 2.4 hours
• Alternate: 25 nm at 110 knots ≈ 0.25 hours
• Reserve: 45 minutes = 0.75 hours
• Total: about 3.4 hours × 10 gph = 34 gallons.

Weight with 34 gallons: 1,660 empty + 204 fuel (at 6 lb/gal) + 760 people and bags = 2,624 pounds - 74 pounds over maximum gross.

Weight with full fuel (48 gallons): 1,660 + 288 + 760 = 2,708 pounds - 158 pounds over.

So the load fails twice over:

• Full fuel is illegal by weight.
• Reducing to exactly the minimum legal fuel is still illegal by weight, and leaves zero contingency.

To fly this trip you must remove weight - roughly 75 pounds of bags at minimum - and then either accept that you are launching at the fuel minimum with no allowance for a low approach, a vector, or a second approach, or you add a fuel stop. Adding fuel is not an option at this weight; you are already at the wall.

The correct conclusion is not "we can shave the fuel." It is the mission as briefed does not work and something must come off the airplane, out of the fuel plan, or off the schedule.

It matters, and it ends the IFR plan.

• Instrument flight rules require a gyroscopic rate-of-turn indicator among the required instruments. The turn coordinator also provides the slip-skid indication you would use for coordination and for partial-panel attitude control.
• No MEL is in play, so the inoperative equipment deferral rule applies. That rule permits deferral only of equipment that is not required by the operating rules or by the aircraft's equipment list. This item is required for IFR, so there is no legal way to placard it and go.
• The placard the shop installed is not a waiver. It documents the discrepancy; it does not authorize flight in conditions where the equipment is required.
• "VMC on top" is irrelevant. You would be operating under IFR for the entire flight, so the IFR equipment list applies from engine start to shutdown, not just where the clouds are.

The remaining question is not a regulatory one but a judgment one: could you go VFR instead? The destination forecast of 1,500 and 4 miles is VFR-legal, but temporarily 2 miles is not, and night VFR over that route with an inoperative instrument and no alternate weather margin is a separate decision you should be honest about rather than a workaround for the IFR problem. The IFR flight, as planned, does not go.