Flight Planning and In-Flight Monitoring
The flight plan
A candidate must build a navigation log: route, tracks, distances, winds aloft, TAS, groundspeed, ETA, fuel. Know how to use the wind triangle for each leg and how to compute leg time and fuel burn. Understand PLOG entries: safe endurance, contingency fuel, alternate fuel, final reserve and taxi fuel.
Fuel planning
Apply the fuel policy: trip fuel + contingency + alternate + final reserve + taxi. Trap: forgetting that contingency is a percentage of trip fuel, not of total fuel, and that final reserve is a fixed time at holding power. Compute fuel flow × time for each segment.
In-flight monitoring
Monitor actual versus planned groundspeed and fuel; recalculate ETA and revised destination. Understand the point of no return (equal time point) and the critical point (equal fuel point), and how wind changes shift them.
Worked example: Trip fuel 400 kg, contingency 5% = 20 kg, alternate 100 kg, final reserve 30 min at 800 kg/h = 400 kg, taxi 10 kg → total ≈ 930 kg. Check each component against the operator's policy.
Also know how to interpret a fuel log and when to declare minimum fuel or mayday fuel.