How to Ace GA Chart briefings

IFR flying presents several challenges that can make flying the airplane more task-saturated than VFR flying. I’ve seen several students get surprised by the implications of information that they’ve already had access to, which slows down their training. To make instrument approaches and briefings straightforward as possible, there are several preparatory tasks you can do ahead of time to make it less daunting. If you’re a visual person, it’s helpful to put all the salient information on your charts ahead of time so that you can be as aware as possible on the approach. If you’re being evaluated, this preparation will also help show your evaluator that you’ve done your homework and will be a safe pilot on your own. Let’s go through an example of the ILS 16R Y into Paine Field as an example, and annotate in ForeFlight (I highly recommend this app for SA and overall usability).

Chart notes

The notes box on FAA charts can often be long, so review it ahead of time and figure out what’s important and what isn’t. In our case, check that the ILS and VOR are up. Today the VOR is out, but our G1000 Cessna 172 has pseudo-DME and GPS missed approach overlays that works for us, so jot that down as a mitigated threat and then put a checkmark in the box to remind yourself that you’ve reviewed it.

Easter Egg Hunt

Go through the chart from top to bottom and look for anything that will make life more difficult, like a challenging missed approach, sharp join angles, non-standard descent rates, PAPI/GP mismatches, runway/approach course offsets, VDP calculations, short FAF-MAP distances, and so forth. Then plan how you’re going to mitigate that. In our case, here’s what I found:
  • Early turn on the missed: ILS mins are at 770, then the first turn is at 1100. In a 172 that gives us 20-30 seconds to cram, climb, clean, click, confess. Anticipate this and chair fly it a few times.
  • Sharp join from CVV: it’s a 67-degree turn to join, which is nearly a right angle. We know we want to start right-angle turns about a half mile out in a 172, so plan to start that turn at 18.8 DME from CVV if you use that feeder route.
  • Non-standard path angle from EYWOK to ITIPE: a quick glance at the chart shows us we need to lose 1000 feet over 7ish miles. 60:1 gives us a GPA of ~1.4. I would thus plan to stay at 3000 until intercepting the glide, then do my config setup at around 4 miles from ITIPE when the needle starts to come off the peg. This keeps it more standard and also keeps you higher over the water.
  • PAPI mismatch: The PAPI TCH is 74 and the ILS GS has us at 57. If you’re planning to use the 1000-footers as your aimpoint, you’ll go three red on short final. Brief that ahead of time.

Reminders and time savers

Add any other notes to help you out, including anything where you’ve struggled in the past and need a reminder. Some that I commonly recommend:
  • Chart currency: look ahead of time and put a checkmark on it so that you’re not wasting time reading it in the airplane.
  • Vitals: if you have a habit of going heads-down for too long and drifting up or down, I recommend sketching a little “V” between boxes on the chart to check your vitals (altitude, speed, heading/course) as you go through the chart.
  • Setup cutoff: Draw an arc where you want to be fully briefed. If you enter that arc and you’re not ready, plan to tell ATC that you’d like to get vectored around again. This forces discipline and limits the temptation to rush and mess it up. If you’re in a Seminole doing the dreaded OEI approach, you can also use this as your “troubleshoot cutoff:” outside the arc you can troubleshoot engine problems, inside the arc you feather and land.
  • Config line: reminder to set up and check your winds before you start down. Winds will be the biggest variable on final, so pre-plan your descent rate and power settings to make life easier.
  • Mins: many charts have several cells. Plan the one you need and circle it to mitigate distractions and picking the wrong one. You can plan to add a buffer of 20-50 feet (each 10 feet gives you about a second to think) so that when the plane says “minimums” you can look up and think for a bit longer. Brief that with your instructor or evaluator if you plan to do that.
By the time you're all done, your chart might look like this:

Briefing the chart prior to approach

When it comes time to execution, it’s a good idea to use your approach charts as checklists to make sure you have everything set up correctly. I’ve seen students read out the information and not verify their setup, then get confused when things don’t go to plan. I like to start at the top and use the Point and call method: read something (e.g. a frequency or course), then point at your panel and verify that you’ve got it in there correctly. Using our above example, it might go like this:
  1. Confirm that the chart name matches what’s in your FMS. If there’s a mismatch, redo the FMS or re-select the correct chart (I’ve let students get pretty far down the page before asking them about that, good Law of Intensity moment). “ILS Y 16R into Paine, checks.”
  2. Confirm your chart currency is good. “Chart’s good.”
  3. Check the navaid frequency against your Nav 1 or 2 and verify the final approach course. Note that on GPS approaches, it may be a few degrees off due to geodesy errors and how people draw straight lines on round planets. If it’s off by more that 5 degrees, don’t fly it. “109.3, that's in Nav 1, course 163, that’s on the HSI in green needles.”
  4. Runway: make sure you’ve got the performance for it. “We got 9010, we need about 2000 of that, TZDE is 570.”
  5. Notes: cover only salient points. “Notes: DME is out, mitigation is our GPS.”
  6. Approach lights and missed: cover the salient points. If you’re flying an FMS-based missed approach and you’ve already verified the fixes and crossing restrictions, you can simply verbalize that this has been covered. “Looking for MALSRs, missed is going to happen quickly, points as checked in the box.”
  7. Frequencies: focus only on the urgent ones. “ATIS we got Kilo, approach we’re talking to, Tower 132.95 in Comm 2, Ground we’ll worry about when we get there.”
  8. Planform: discuss how you expect to join and execute. “We’ll get direct EYWOK from the south, then course reversal, stay at 3000 until intercept, then configure and start down.
  9. Profile: discuss your planned descent rate and power settings, and get a wind check if applicable. Note anything you highlighted earlier. “We got a 3-degree glidepath and 30 knots on the nose, so we’ll start with 1900 RPM and look for 400 FPM. Breaking out, we’re looking for those MALSRs and PAPIs right side, expecting three red.”
  10. Mins: enter the appropriate value that you've pre-selected and cross-check against the ATIS. “Mins for the ILS are 770 and RVR 1800. We got 3 miles and 600 on the ATIS, should work. I’ve set 800 for a 3-second decision buffer.”
  11. Airport view: brief anything important there. “We’ll be straight in, exit left side. If we break out early, look for VFR traffic on the parallel.”
  12. Wrap up: verbalize when you’re done. “Anything else? Briefing complete.”
All of that should take less than a minute if you’ve planned it out.

Debrief

After every flight, debrief what worked and what didn’t. In my experience, each student develops their own unique pattern of missing something, which then takes more lessons to clean up. If you catch yourself thinking "Next time I just need to remember XYZ," stop and create a plan to engineer that failure mode out of the equation. (Instructors, same goes for you, "Next time, remember XYZ" is often an unhelpful call to action for your student. Replace that with "Your homework is to show up with a plan to engineer failure mode XYZ out of your flying.") If you need a reminder to do XYZ, go ahead and add it to the chart to give yourself more opportunities to catch it. As your skills improve, you’ll develop your own annotation techniques. When you get into faster airplanes, there are a few additional things to keep in mind as well. Happy flying.