Personal Weather Minimums & the Go/No-Go Brief
Key concepts for building a written personal minimums table and running a repeatable IFR go/no-go brief.
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Questions Covered in This Set
12 cards to master
Why must personal minimums be written down rather than memorized?
A number kept in your head is a number you will renegotiate at the gate under self-imposed pressure; writing it down makes it a hard commitment.
What does FAA accident data reveal about GA weather fatalities?
Continued flight into deteriorating conditions and loss of control in IMC dominate the record, and almost none of those flights were illegal at takeoff — they were legal and unwise.
Suggested baseline personal minimum for departure ceiling/visibility (Part 91 legal is 0/0)?
600 ft ceiling / 2 SM visibility — enough to return and land if the engine or vacuum fails.
Baseline personal minimum at the destination relative to published DA/MDA?
Published minimums plus 300 ft and plus 1 SM, so you break out well above minimums.
Baseline icing rule for a non-FIKI single?
No visible moisture below +2°C at any altitude on route, including climb and descent.
Name three items on the adjustment ladder that tighten every number.
Fewer than 3 approaches in last 30 days (+200 ft/+½ SM), unfamiliar airport (+200 ft), unfamiliar airplane or avionics (+200 ft); any I'M SAFE flag = add margin or don't go.
How may you legitimately loosen personal minimums toward the legal floor?
Only via a deliberate, planned experience-building step — e.g., flying to lower minimums with a current CFII, in daylight, at a familiar field — never under get-home pressure.
What are the five steps of the go/no-go brief?
1) Big picture (fronts, air mass, stability), 2) Vertical picture (freezing level, tops, icing/turbulence), 3) Endpoints (departure, destination ±1 hr, alternate, en route bail-out), 4) Trend not snapshot, 5) Hard commitments in writing.
What sentence tests whether you understand the day's weather?
"Today's weather is caused by ______." If you can't finish it, you don't understand the day.
'Ice has only two exits' — what are they, and what must you verify?
Warmer air below or clear air above/behind; verify at least one exists before departure.
What does 'trend, not snapshot' mean when reading a TAF?
Compare the last three destination METARs against the TAF; a TAF already wrong at hour one can't be trusted at hour four.
Which hard commitments should be written down before engine start?
Minimum landing fuel, the planned approach and its DA, the missed-approach plan, the divert airport plus the fuel state that triggers the divert, and the one condition that means turn around now.
