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Ultimate Issue: Top 10 Tips for Mitigating Risk in the Air

These aren't pilot secrets, but if your preflight planning tells you some of the risks you're facing are too great, consider this advice.

Nobody in their right mind takes off into a thunderstorm. But landing before you reach a fast-moving squall line, letting it blow over, and then continuing your journey is good risk management. [iStock]
Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • General aviation risk management focuses on three primary areas: weather, aircraft suitability, and pilot capability.
  • Weather risks are mitigated through comprehensive preflight briefings, flexible timing, strategic rerouting, and adjusting flight altitudes to avoid adverse conditions.
  • Aircraft suitability involves ensuring sufficient fuel, utilizing faster and higher-performing aircraft, and having appropriate onboard equipment, while pilot capability requires self-assessment of physical and mental state, continuous skill training, and flexible decision-making.
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Everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.” Stop me if you’ve heard that before.

The same could be said about managing the risk of general aviation. We—both FLYING and the industry as a whole—spend a lot of time preaching to pilots about the mechanics of understanding weather forecasts, determining if the aircraft is capable, and making honest evaluations of our own performance in considering how and when to conduct a flight. But once we identify the need to mitigate a risk, we sometimes have little space left over to describe the tools we can use.

Joseph "Jeb" Burnside

Jeb Burnside has served as editor in chief of Aviation Safety magazine. He’s an airline transport pilot who owns a Beech Debonair, plus the expensive half of an Aeronca L-16B/7CCM Champ.

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