Flight Following, Part II

I was motoring home from New Orleans a couple of months ago, sliding eastbound along the shoreline, IFR at 9000 feet. After a controller gave me a frequency change for the next controller, I switched over and listened, which I always do when coming onto a new frequency. The first transmission I heard was a pilot saying something like ...and we have four hours of fuel aboard. Hmmm. In my experience, its rare for anyone to talk about their fuel availability on an ATC frequency unless theres an emergency in progress and ATC wants to know souls and endurance.

Joseph E. (Jeb) Burnside

Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

VFR flight following provides crucial safety benefits beyond just traffic advisories, including essential safety alerts for terrain, obstructions, and other aircraft, as well as limited radar vectoring.
It is vital for VFR pilots to proactively request and obtain flight following to be "in the system" and ensure ATC assistance is available before any emergency arises.
Pilots should be familiar with how to request flight following (from ground control at towered airports or airborne from non-towered fields) and how to manage handoffs or re-establish service across different ATC sectors.

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Editor’s note: This article is a companion to the one we ran in last month’s issue on VFR flight following, and attempts to fill in a few gaps in the big picture that space limitations prevented us from filling.

I was motoring home from New Orleans a couple of months ago, sliding eastbound along the shoreline, IFR at 9000 feet. After a controller gave me a frequency change for the next controller, I switched over and listened, which I always do when coming onto a new frequency. The first transmission I heard was a pilot saying something like “…and we have four hours of fuel aboard.” Hmmm. In my experience, it’s rare for anyone to talk about their fuel availability on an ATC frequency unless there’s an emergency in progress and ATC wants to know souls and endurance.