ABSTRACT
During the preflight planning, obtain a good flight planning form and use it. Carefully plan your time and distances, and the fuel burn for each leg of the trip. Realizing that the headwinds increase the flight time and thus the amount of fuel burned, I teach my students that they should use 125 percent of the headwind component, but only half of the tailwind component. This results in a rather conservative fuel burn estimate, but I’ve found it better to arrive at the destination a few minutes early with a little extra fuel in the tanks than short of the destination with no fuel in the tanks.
