PILOT’S DISCRETION FLYING Opinion
T & T
TRAINING
& TECHNIQUE
26 | SEPTEMBER 2019 FLYINGMAG.COMO
n a scale of 1 to 10, how would you
rate the quality of your weather
briefing before each flight? Does the
wealth of information available from
mobile apps and online resources
give you the feeling of being more
prepared today, compared to calling
Flight Service 15 years ago? Or do you
find it more challenging now, hunt-
ing down various resources, reports
and forecasts from a variety of dif-
ferent sources online and in several
different locations in the same app,
trying to build a mental picture of the
atmosphere before each flight?
Personally, I’ve never been satisfied
with the weather-briefing process,
starting with the phone briefings I
learned to use in the late 1990s. These
were—and still are—constrained to
a rigid f low, which ensured the same
forecasts and reports were provided
by the briefer in the same sequence
for every briefing. They were hardly
considered complete on their own,
as you still had to check in on a com-
puter after the call to get an update onmetars and visualize the latest surface
analysis, radar and satellite imagery.
Fast-forward to today, when pilots
have access to more preflight weather
resources than ever before thanks
to mobile apps and the expansion
of weather-product offerings from
the National Weather Service and
Aviation Weather Center websites.
The most significant improvement in
the past 10 years is the ability to dis-
play the core weather products on aninteractive touchscreen map when
planning a flight in your favorite
electronic f light bag app, providing a
higher level of context.
Metars, TAFs, pireps, radar imagery
and airmets only scratch the surface
when considering all the resources
available to pilots today. The challenge
now is, first, knowing what additional
resources are available from the NWS
and then, more important, where
to find them. The government-run
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, NWS and AWC web-
sites leave a lot to be desired, and I
find it more efficient to use Google
to search for specific forecasts and
charts instead of attempting to nav-
igate disjointed menus to find the
Graphical Forecast for Aviation,
Traffic Flow Management Convective
Forecast products or model-based
forecast graphics, for example. Several
of the popular EFB apps offer a lim-
ited selection of secondary resources,
but they are typically tucked away in
a separate weather-imagery sectionTHE REVERSE
WEATHER BRIEFING
HOW TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE ON EVERY FLIGHTBy Bret KoebbePERSONALLY,
I’VE NEVER BEEN
SATISFIED WITH
THE WEATHER-
BRIEFING PROCESS,
STARTING WITH THE
PHONE BRIEFINGS I
LEARNED TO USE IN
THE LATE 1990S.