What Does Having Personal Minimums Really Mean - MzeroA Flight Training

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Personal minimums take the emotion out of the equation. By letting the METAR make the decision for you and not the pressure to make the flight will allow you to be a safer pilot. After watching the video comment below what your personal minimums are and how they might change depending on the flight.

[@golfbravowhiskey8669]

Jason. I’ve said it a thousand times. Experience will kill you ! You take a student he’s extremely cautious and takes every warning seriously, i would say if you crunched the numbers i bet there is less incidents involving weather/wind/dust with students and when i say students i mean

[@aviatorcrafty102]

I'm a sport pilot with 45 hours, these are my minimums: Solo: Clouds: no less than 4000 feet (if I'm just doing pattern work I'll let them go down to 2000) Visibility: no less than 7 sm Wind: no more than 15 knots (including gusts) and no more than 10 knot crosswind component Passenger: Clouds: no less than 4000 feet Visibility: no less than 7 sm Wind: 10 knots or less (light sport aircraft can get squirrely and may scare a non-pilot)

[@TheWaterbouy88]

Great reminder to have personal minimums and adjust them as you stated. And remember a good pilot is always learning!

[@pilotchristian]

Just check the "Risk Management Handbook" (Change 1), FAA-H-8083-2. On page 89, there is an example for a VFR pilot with 100 hours. Since I have almost 100 hours, I adapted the values, except: Minimum visibility - day VFR = +6 miles (instead of 5 miles) Minimum visibility night VFR = +10 miles (instead of 7) Minimum ceiling - night VFR = SCL (instead of 5,000 feet) Not in the example: temp/dew point spread. For me, it should be at least 5 degrees Celsius (since I fly in South Florida, I guess I have to redefine it ;-) ) For me it works perfectly well. I have it in my flight bag, and as Jason said, most times I can make my decision already after having checked the METAR. Only if the METAR is ok, I am going to dig deeper into my weather briefing. By the way: my DPE was impressed by my approach to this during the ckeckride! CU in the sky, and stay healthy!

[@sazzy6264]

AMAZING ADVICE. I know myself, and I know that I personally am very easily influenced by external pressures--i.e., "When are you gonna take me flying?" or get-it-done-itis. Impressing your friends or pushing that one extra hour of flight time is not worth sacrificing your or your passengers safety. These are great tools that I will indeed remind myself to use the next time I find myself trying to justify a flight when it seems questionable.

[@craigsanders6925]

Don't have any set yet, still training and will be discussing it with my CFI this week. Fuel, 1 hour day, 1.5 hour night, wind I don't know, have been landing in 10 know crosswind without issue recently. Clouds, not many that's for sure. :)

[@tonyharnett3169]

As a student pilot I was going solo to the practice area and wasn't totally comfortable with the weather but my instructor gave me a nudge saying "I know you can follow ABC Street back so you'll be fine" ... I got back to the circuit and knew where I was in relationship to the runway but couldn't see it ... finally I was able to see the PAPIs through the fog/haze and landed no problem but that flippin freaked me out man. I now have a buddy who's constantly teasing me 'cause I wont fly in marginal weather but at least I know I'm getting back safely :)

[@timf5534]

Got my private pilot check ride scheduled in 2 weeks. This was my homework to do, other than study my butt off. Create my own personal minimums. Not just to tell the examiner but to stick with and adjust as necessary. Thanks Jason for all your videos, they've helped me out tremendously throughout my training.

[@Da-Creams]

TimGFree Good luck man most examiners are nice dudes.

[@bradleyspurrier4138]

Good luck man!

[@lucky_one2]

+1000 ft above Inst approach minimums, +3 sm above required approach visibility, winds above 12 kts crosswind or gusts > 25 kts at the runway (I would never take non-pilot passengers in high winds...it’s just not fun for them usually and they will never come back). Night flying VFR only. If I am with a CFII I will push minimums to published approach values for training and experience. I like the interactive personal minimums tool in the Cirrus FOM...give it a look.

[@gatanner1]

For me it’s all about the wind. And turbulence. I hate turbulence. Living in Seattle I get accustomed to a little bit of cloud cover...if I’m uncomfortable I’ll just fly the pattern and practice touch and goes. If it’s windy or unstable, I won’t go. I’d rather save my money for a better day. I did fly across country wants from Sacramento to Chico California and what I thought was 10 SM visibility. What I didn’t think about was the amount of fire smoke and haze in the air. I couldn’t see squat. And this was a cross country for my private pilots license. I made it but I was so glad to get down on the ground again.

[@thefezz4921]

I fly maybe 3 - 5 times a year, my personal minimums are to only fly in sunny WX with no wind, sometimes I fly CCTS in shitty WX just to Keep the crosswind landings in check. I only fly for fun so like to fly in the best WX possible. I also try and try something new when I fly, such as use the Ipad only,sometimes fly paper only, try forced landings or go somewhere I do not know. I think because I only fly 5 times a year I am always learning 90% of what I already knew but had to re learn due to not flying much and learn %10 something new, as long as we are all having fun and learning safely we are achieving our goals. I also like reflecting on my mistakes which I do make,

[@simcptmike]

Great video. Thanks. Although at the end I noticed you are wearing two wrist watches... Any reason? 🤣🤔

[@johnpollock291]

As a sport pilot and, depending on where I'm flying, my minimums are clouds at 2000 ft, visibility 10 SM and winds greater than 10 Knots. This is for pattern work which I do a lot of. If I'm going outside the pattern, the clouds must be higher than 5000 ft. Everything else remains the same.

[@andyk295]

Full tanks, 3SM, 5000', 12 knots unless I'm practicing in the pattern. The areas around VNY, SZP and other SoCal airports are full of hills and mountains. I always tell the briefer (another 'minimum' : get a briefing) that if it gets ugly after going up and having a look I'll turn back. I've done that a few times. One time a well known CFI who teaches aerobatics said 'I know it looks beautiful up there but we're in the middle of three convergent weather systems and I'm on the ground not doing what I love. That should tell you something.' I cancelled my cross country flight.

[@WinginWolf]

It's even better to have intermediate minimums in there as well that are not as conservative. That way if weather is right at that definite minimum, you know you've already pushed it far enough that it'll be easier to be convinced not to add a single knot more or extra hundred feet less of cloud ceiling. If I'm on a local flight, 2500 feet ceiling means I can fly at 2000. Not bad, but the clouds might dip, terrain might rise or you don't feel like that's 500 feet, so actually I may be flying at 1800 to be certain. For that reason, I'd say if I definitely don't want to fly any lower than 1500 feet AGL on even a local flight, I'd add a 2-300 foot buffer and say lowest ceiling is going to be 2200-2300 for me.

[@Jdrew27]

I'll be a good example of adjustable minimums. I have my private with instrument rating. I was working on my commercial I was within a week of being checkride ready. My minimums at the time were for VFR 6 sm vis clouds no lower than 4000 AGL winds no more than 25kts crosswind or not. Since this covid 19 I haven't flown in a month. Today is supposed to be first flight since then I am considering canceling. Visablity and clouds are phenomenal but right now the winds are 16kt I'm thinking my minimums should be no more than 10kts

[@HiTechRob]

* Fuel Reserves: 1 hour (daytime); 1.5 hours (nighttime) * Wind: 15 knots max; 8 knots xwind * Visibility: 8 miles * Clouds/Ceiling: 3,500 feet * Density Altitude: ? * Highest Terrain: ? * Shortest runway: 2,500 feet * Airports: D, E, or G * Airspace: D, E of G * Flight Deck: Steam gauges * Aircraft Type: Cessna 172

[@HiTechRob]

I haven’t flown in those conditions yet so it is a current minimum.

[@franck_mee]

I'd argue that tiredness should be taken into account as well. My personal minimums are 700 ft, 5 km (that's about 3 sm I guess?) and 25 kt axial/15 kt crosswind on a grass runway, 10kt crosswind on a hard runway. BUT that's for 10 min max. For 10 to 30 min, I wouldn't fly with clouds below 1500 ft or less than 8 km visibility, and over that no less than 2500 and 10 km. Because I know that while I can fly safely keeping my track right at 500 to 600 ft and I can navigate with 5 km visibility (in an flat area I'm familiar with of course), anytime I do that I get tired very quickly, and it wouldn't be safe to imagine doing that more than a few minutes. I live 100 km from the ocean, so it's quite usual here to have a stable cloud layer from the sea up to right about our airport: one day we're CAVOK and the next airport west is 1000 ft/5 km, the next day we're 1000 ft/5 km and the next airport east is CAVOK. So going inland, we quite often have that 10 nm marginal flight before we get a bright blue sky with literally hundreds of km of visibility. So I know that for me 5 to 10 min is fine, but 15 min are too exhausting to land comfortably.

[@HiTechRob]

For Sure. IMSAFE and PAVE should be part of ever pre-flight "go-no go" decision... Pilot, Aircraft, Environment, External Pressures... Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion/Eating... all the other stuff we are talking about are part of Environment - Weather minimums...

[@bryansmant870]

I recently earned my instrument rating, despite that, my minimums, for now, are MVFR at my point of departure and my destination. While I did get some actual time during training, I've not had any while flying solo yet. I figure until I actually have actual time and fly actual approaches on my own, MVFR gives me a pretty reasonable margin of error with respect to weather forecasts and such. I figure I'll reevaluate that yearly or based on the experiences I've had in the last year. Though they will probably always be pretty high. I fly only for fun, and shooting approaches to minimums, with a high chance of going missed, doesn't sound like fun to me...

[@WinginWolf]

The visibility if below 10 means that's the farthest you can absolutely see. It may not mean that's the farthest you can see clearly.