Your favorite flight-planning website might conveniently calculate times and fuel burns at a most favorable altitude, but there are times when it’s likely to be dead wrong.
Forecast-Wind Follies
If I were crowned king, my first decree would be to abolish the official winds and temperatures aloft forecast, also known as the FBWinds. Its an outdated product thats fraught with problems. The problems get compounded when pilots unknowingly misuse the forecast.
Key Takeaways:
- The official FBWinds (winds and temperatures aloft) forecast is an outdated, automated product generated without human oversight, leading to potential inaccuracies.
- It has significant limitations in both spatial resolution, with widely spaced forecast stations, and temporal resolution, being truly valid only at specific 6-hour intervals.
- These limitations mean flight planning based solely on FBWinds can result in significant errors in groundspeed, fuel burn, and critical weather details like freezing levels, especially when weather is changing rapidly.
- Pilots are advised to recognize these shortcomings and consider alternative, higher-resolution forecast tools like the Skew-T log (p) diagram for more accurate pre-flight planning.
Key takeaways sponsored by Aviator Pro | Start Your Training ->
See a mistake? Contact us.
