Flight Planning, how not to do it.

So our household is pretty much aviation geek central at the moment. RTH needs to fly at least once a month in order to keep current with the flight school and I’m aiming for twice a week at the moment in preparation for the dreaded “S” word (that’s not going to happen any way; Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt!).

This manifests itself in various ways, last night instead of doing the normal mid-week coupley things like arguing or mindlessly watching TV, we whiled away the time by planning a flight to Niagara Falls. This had two purposes. 1) RTH knows that I’m struggling with the Navigation part of my studies (mainly because I haven’t really had to do any yet) and 2) we fancy actually doing a flight to Niagara Falls.

Now this is a more challenging flight to plan than say, our trip to Muskoka, for many reasons. Niagara Falls is a busy area and so has special procedures in place for VFR sightseeing traffic, you are also very very close to US airspace (in fact I believe that the VFR sightseeing route actually skirts into it). US airspace is not a place you want to find yourself in accidentally! There are also other routing issues to consider, the main one being that you can’t just nip over the lake. You need to stay within gliding distance of the shoreline. There are other factors which will become clearer later.

So we pulled out our VNC chart and established that I knew where we were and where we were heading. We found the appropriate Niagara Falls specific procedures in the CFS and decided that it doesn’t look so bad as long as you stay above 3500ft. We discussed our planned route and altitude and I was reasonably confident that I had a pretty good handle on all of this.

Then the gentle question from RTH, “so we’re good to fly down at 3500ft then?” Ah ha! He’s trying to trick me but I’ve checked on the chart, our minimum obstacle clearance height is only 2500ft, yep we are good to go. “Pull out your VTA chart.”

Oh crap, I’ve just flown us through two major airport control zones! One of which is probably the busiest in the country.  Nice if you fancy playing chicken with a 777.

So then we have a discussion on class E airspace, Flight Following Services and other ATC miscellany. I’m sure normal couples don’t spend their time this way!