Navigation and cross-country flight planning

What this lesson is for: teaching a student to plan a cross-country, and then teaching them what to do when the plan stops matching the world. The second half is the part that matters.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation II, Task I.
• From live eCFR: 91.103, 91.151, 61.93.
• FAA-H-8083-25C, the navigation and flight planning chapters, plus the October 2025 addendum.

Deliverable: Plan a cross-country of at least 50 nautical miles from your home field, by hand, on paper, using a current sectional. Bring the navigation log.

Then mark the three points on the route where you would expect a student to get behind the airplane, and say what you would do about each. That annotation is the actual assignment. The planning is just what makes it possible.

1. Route selection, and teaching a student to choose a route rather than accept one.
2. Pilotage and dead reckoning, and why they are still worth teaching.
3. The navigation log, and which parts of it a student actually uses in the air.
4. Fuel planning and reserves.
5. Weather, NOTAMs, and required preflight action.
6. Diversion and lost procedures, as a decision rather than a formula.
7. What you must check before you sign a student's first solo cross-country.
8. You teach.

• Teach an assigned element for about ten minutes.
• Make a diversion decision from a scenario given to you in the air, then say what you would have taught a student to do.
• Deal with a student who planned entirely on an app and does not see a problem with that.

1. You teach an assigned element for about ten minutes.
2. You make a diversion decision from an in-flight scenario, state your reasoning, and say what you would have a student do differently.
3. You state fuel reserve requirements from the regulation and North Aero's own figure, and say which is which.
4. You address the app-only student by naming a specific failure rather than by asserting that paper is better.
5. You state what you must verify before endorsing a first student solo cross-country, from 61.93.
6. You deliver a self-critique before hearing your instructor's.

• Teaching the navigation log as arithmetic. Which columns does a student actually look at while flying? Teach those; the rest is homework.
• Teaching diversion as a formula. Nearest airport, turn, done. Real diversions are decisions made under time pressure with incomplete information.
• Being dismissive about the app. The app is excellent. Sole reliance on a single battery-powered device is the problem, and that is a much easier argument to win.
• Quoting a fuel burn from memory. It comes from the airplane's book.
• Mixing up the regulatory reserve and the school's. You must be able to say which is which.
• Not knowing 61.93 before you need it. You will write these endorsements in your first month.
• Planning a route no student could actually follow by looking out of the window.

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

This lesson has no Video Slots.