Planning a mountain route
Passes, escape options, fuel, and weather windows.
14 min read · Mountain and high-altitude flying
After this lesson you can
- Explain why the time of day is a performance variable, not just a comfort preference, on a mountain route.
- Choose checkpoints that also work as course boundaries in valley and pass terrain.
- Plan fuel reserves that account for a mountain route's reduced number of usable alternates.
- Compare a planned crossing altitude against the airplane's actual climb capability for the day, not the book numbers.
A mountain flight is planned and decided almost entirely before the engine starts. Once an airplane is partway down a valley, boxed in by rising terrain on both sides, the number of options left is small, and none of them make up for a route, a departure time, or a fuel load chosen badly on the ground.
This lesson works through the planning decisions that actually matter in mountain terrain: when to go, how to choose checkpoints that double as course boundaries, how much fuel and margin to carry beyond the minimum, and how to compare the day's actual climb performance against the terrain the route crosses, before committing to any of it.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.Timing is a performance parameter
- 2.Checkpoints that are also boundaries
- 3.Fuel: the reserve is a floor, not a target
- 4.Matching the route to the airplane's real ceiling
- 5.Oxygen above the passes
- 6.The decision points, written down before engine start
These 6 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the CPL track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.