Preparation and clearance pickup

Filing the plan, getting a clearance on the ground or in the air, and correcting your altitudes for cold weather before you ever release the brakes.

16 min read · Flying IFR: departure to landing

After this lesson you can

  • File an IFR flight plan with the right lead time and know the three ways to receive a clearance.
  • Read a clearance-void instruction correctly and know what happens if you miss it.
  • Decide when a cold-temperature altitude correction is required, and calculate one from the ICAO table.
  • Explain why a corrected altitude must be reported to ATC on some segments but not others.

N7421G, a Cessna 182, is on the ramp at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (KMHT) in New Hampshire. The destination is Boston Logan International (KBOS), about 35 nautical miles south, and the morning brief shows a solid 700-foot overcast sitting over the whole route. This is a short flight, but every one of the eight lessons in this module walks through it in order, because the sequence - not the distance - is what an instrument flight is built from: preparation, departure, the en route phase, arrival, the approach, and the landing.

This first lesson stops before the engine even starts. Two things have to be right before N7421G taxis: the flight plan has to be filed and the clearance has to be in hand, and if the temperature outside is cold enough, the altitudes on the chart have to be corrected before they mean what they say. Skipping any one of the three does not usually cause a problem - until the day it does.

The rest of this lesson

  1. 1.Gathering what you need
  2. 2.Filing the flight plan
  3. 3.Picking up the clearance: three doors
  4. 4.Void times and airborne pickup
  5. 5.Reading back, and asking again
  6. 6.Cold temperature altitude errors: when they matter
  7. 7.Cold temperature altitude errors: how to correct them

These 7 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the IFR track. Paid once, yours for good.

See what the IFR track costsEvery module 1 is free to read, no account, no card.

Key terms

Try to recall each definition before turning the card.