Flight Planning and Following Is Not Just for Cross-Country

It’s vital for pilots to know these risk management skills.

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 11:26 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

IFR flight plans provide important layers of planning and situational awareness to the benefit of everyone in the sky. [Shutterstock]

Key Takeaways:

A CFI argued that knowing how to file flight plans and use flight following is obsolete due to modern navigational apps and ADS-B, questioning its necessity for check rides.
The article emphasizes that these skills are explicitly required by the Airman Certification Standards (ACS) for private pilots under specific tasks related to risk management and flight planning.
While electronic flight bags (EFBs) are acceptable, pilots must understand the underlying elements of a VFR flight plan, and DPEs may require demonstrating analog (paper) navlog creation.
Pilots need to know how to file, activate, and critically, close VFR flight plans using various methods (phone, radio, apps), understanding that canceling flight following is distinct from closing a flight plan to prevent a search.

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I don’t think the check ride went very well because the CFI was raising a stink that lingered about the DPE’s insistence that the applicant know how to file and activate a flight plan and know the procedure for obtaining flight following.

The CFI argued that these skills are obsolete because of the technology available now, suggesting that navigational apps, such as ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot, combined with ADS-B make the filing of flight plans and using flight following obsolete. He noted you can track someone via an app like FlightAware.com if you know their tail number and know where they are at all times.