I was surprised when I read recently that many new airline pilot job applicants struggle with decoding basic metar weather reports. It would seem to me that if you’ve done enough flying to reach the interview stage with a commercial carrier, you would have interpreted hundreds if not thousands of metars along the way.
Maybe it’s the invention of software that can translate metars into “plain English” that has caused such befuddlement among would-be airline pilots. Still, with a little practice metars aren’t hard to grasp – and being able to do so could save your bacon if you’re staring down an un-translated report and need to make a go/no-go decision in marginal weather.
