Mastering the First Dual Cross-Country Flight Requires Solid Prep and Navigation Skills
The first dual-instruction, cross-country flight is one of the most task-saturating lessons a student pilot can undertake. The flight is likely the longest lesson you'll have done to date, and it may be the first time you've had a lesson outside the practice area. When training is under Part 141, this flight is usually done a lesson or two after the first solo. Part 141 programs also have a list of "approved" airports that they are allowed to fly to. Part 61 doesn't require strict adherence to a syllabus, so there's really no rule about when cross-country training should take place. However, the learner gets more out of the experience when they have logged a few hours of local dual instruction so they understand how to use a checklist, the radio, and have some basic navigation and aircraft-handling skills. Without this base knowledge, the learner is little more than an enthusiastic passenger going for a ride. Under Part 61 there's more freedom when it comes to selecting an airport to fly to. To qualify as a cross-country flight, the distance between the starting point and terminus has to be at least 50 nm straight-line distance. Confirm this span using a plotter on a VFR sectional. Longer—even just by a few miles—is better. To count as a cross-country flight, you must land at the airport. READ MORE: When GPS Fails: Lessons From a Fatal Air Ambulance Crash READ MORE: Beat the Heat: Mastering Density Altitude Over 20-plus years as a CFI, I've learned that best practice for the first dual cross-country flight is to do a ground session with the learner to help them create the navlog. You might argue they learned how to do that in ground school. Maybe they did, or maybe they didn't. Either way you want this experience to be a good one, so it's a good idea to do a session on navlogs. If they know what they're doing, I ask them to teach it to me. Why did they choose that landmark? What altitude is appropriate? Etcetera. I'm a big believer in the paper navlog for the primary learner. While I know they'll use ForeFlight or another app later in their careers, on this day they will learn the basics—pilotage, dead reckoning, and aircraft performance calculated by hand. You can tell when this foundational knowledge has been skipped. One afternoon when the new-hire CFI and his learner returned from their first cross-country flight, you could tell by the looks on their faces as they walked off the ramp that it had not been a good day. I heard both sides of the story at different times. At this school primary learners were required to learn and use analog navigation (paper sectionals, pilotage, and dead reckoning) for the first few cross-country flights. Electronic apps and the GPS were not utilized until the final phase of training. The learner hadn't finished filling out the navlog because he couldn't remember how to do it. Private pilot ground school had been more than a year ago, and he hadn't used these skills since. He thought the CFI would help him finish filling it out, but the instructor was eager to get into the air, so they took off with a half-finished navlog. The CFI had been to the destination many times when he was attending the local Part 141 school in the area, so he was familiar with the route. The learner was not familiar with the route. He had difficulty finding landmarks and matching them to the VFR sectional— which he reported seemed to grow and take over the cockpit—and struggled to do ground speed checks with the E6-B. When he dropped the airplane to fly the navlog or the sectional, it resulted in altitude deviations, unwanted heading changes, and at least one missed radio call. When he asked the CFI for help, the instructor pointed out he was supposed to have learned how to do these things in ground school—a comment that wasn't helpful at all. After a few awkward moments of silence, the learner turned around the airplane, stating the lesson was over, and they were returning to the home airport. There was an extensive postflight debriefing. The CFI, who was relatively inexperienced (less than 400 hours total time, less than 50 hour dual given), said he was confused as to why the learner hadn't completed the navlog since he "learned it" in ground school. The student pilot had not learned it, and there's a big difference between having the information presented to you and filling out a navlog in the classroom and then performing the required navigation skills in the air. The learner hadn't reached that level of performance yet as no one had shown him how to do it. CFIs can introduce parts of cross-country flying during out-and-back lessons to the practice area. Note the distance between a landmark and the airport, give the learner an estimated ground speed, and have them use the E6-B to determine the time en route. It's quick and nonthreatening, and gives them an idea of what to expect. To the learners: Before you go on your first dual cross-country flight, insist on doing a ground session a few days before the scheduled flight to make sure you have the technical skills. Ask your CFI to go through filling out an analog (paper) navlog. While you'll likely be using an electronic flight bag (EFB) for a good portion of your training, learning the analog methods often provides a better understanding of the elements of navigation. Discuss the routing. Pick out landmarks that are no more than 10 to 15 nm apart and stick out like a frog in a baptismal fountain, such as cities, shorelines, other airports, football stadiums, large lakes with names, large factories, etc. Make note of the VOR frequencies and automated weather sources along the route. Note the airspace on the sectional, what the clearance requirements are (if any) and, using the winds aloft as culled from the weather briefing you get before the lesson, determine aircraft performance with the aircraft POH and E6-B. About the E6-B: The mechanical version doesn't have to be intimidating. It has the directions for each calculation printed on it. If you can follow the recipe on a box of instant mashed potatoes, you can perform calculations with a mechanical E6-B. You may find it's actually quicker to use the mechanical one rather than the calculator-style one—and it's one less thing in the airplane needing batteries. Pro Tip s Obviously it's a lot easier to perform calculations when sitting in a classroom at a desk than flying. To prepare for the cockpit, lose the desk. Sit in a chair with your kneeboard on one leg as if in the airplane and perform time, speed, and distance calculations. Practice unfolding and refolding the sectional. Do a little sectional origami if necessary to keep it from taking over the cockpit. Instructors: Be sure to demonstrate how to divert to another airport. Pick a suitable one other than the original destination and determine the distance, heading, time, and fuel required to get there. Select an airport that's hard to find. We have a few in the Seattle area that you swear have a cloaking device because they seem invisible unless you approach them from a specific angle. Emphasize the need to look out the window instead of hitting the "direct-to" button on the GPS. The latter becomes a crutch and can bite the learner when they are on the check ride and the examiner "fails" the GPS. Savvy instructors create a paper navlog for cross-country flights. There will probably be certain airports you always fly to for them. You can "preload" these with landmarks, distances, VOR and AWOS frequencies, etc. The day of the flight, you just have to add the winds and aircraft performance, per the POH. This instructor-made navlog comes in handy when the learner hasn't finished theirs, they've done creative math, or their calculations are way off. Using the CFI-created navlog, the learner can find the landmarks, perform the ground speed checks, and determine time en route and time to the next checkpoint. Often this practice g