So you’ve recently passed your private pilot checkride. Congratulations! You’re now part of club of certificated pilots that includes less than 2% of the population of the United States. For some people, a private pilot certificate is the highest rating they will seek. For others, this certificate is the first step towards a professional career in aviation. Regardless of the case, one thing is for certain: a private pilot’s license is a license to learn.
For most of us, our peak aviation proficiency occurs right before we take a checkride. Many of the hours spent leading up to that nerve-racking day are used polishing up maneuvers and preparing to show the designated pilot examiner that you can meet the standards set forth by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Even though it might have been years since you’ve become a certificated pilot, that experience is hard to forget.
Personal Minimums
Personal Minimums is both an exercise and a tool to ensure that pilots take a logical and objective approach to evaluating fitness to fly a specific flight. They refer to an individual pilot’s set of procedures, rules, criteria, and guidelines for deciding whether and under what conditions to operate. The goal of establishing these rules and criteria is to provide a solid safety buffer between the pilot skills and aircraft capability required for the specific flight you want to make, and the pilot skills and aircraft capability available to you through training, experience, currency, proficiency and, in the case of the airplane, performance characteristics.
The use of a personal minimums worksheet is paramount in establishing specific acceptable or unacceptable values for conditions such as ceiling, wind, runway length et cetera. By establishing specific values for each component on the worksheet, making a go/no-go decision for a particular flight becomes much easier than making one without established minimums.
When establishing or adjusting specific values of your personal minimums, be sure to make an honest assessment of your skills and experience. Most personal minimums are specific to make and model of aircraft along with category and class. For example, just because I feel comfortable with 12 knot crosswinds in a Cessna 172, doesn’t mean I’ll feel the same about that crosswind in a Cessna 152!
Another factor to keep in mind when setting personal minimums is your recency of experience. When it comes to aeronautical experience, 500 hours of flight time earned a number of years ago doesn’t necessarily hold the same value to personal minimums as 100 hours of flight time earned in the past 12 months. A good personal minimums worksheet will take into account the number of hours flown in the past 30 days and/or 12 months.
If you haven’t established your personal minimums or haven’t review the values in a while, now would be a good time to review or establish some. The FAA has an excellent example of a personal minimums worksheet available here.
So now that you’ve established your personal minimums, you might be wondering how to continue to improve as an aviator and decrease the minimum values. The easiest way to accomplish this is to get out and fly and work on your skills. While you don’t want to fly in conditions that are below your personal minimums, going out and seeking a challenge within your skill set can help make you a more proficient aviator.
Another option available is to fly with a flight instructor to help build on the skills you already have. Believe it or not, flight instructors can assists for things other than a rating or a flight review. Going out and flying with a flight instructor in conditions less than your personal minimums (but greater than hers!) is a safe way to build your confidence and skills. This could lead to lowering those minimums to a new level that still leaves a safety margin.
Closing Thoughts
There are a number of personal minimum checklists available on the internet that can assist a pilot in determining where to set their personal minimums. While some of these take different factors into account and emphasize certain areas over others, all methods agree on one principle: stick to the plan. Personal minimum worksheets only provide an adequate safety margin if they are held in the highest regard. As proficient aviators, it is our responsibility to follow our personal minimums no matter the circumstances in order to maintain the highest level of safety possible.
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