Flight Planning and Weather

We must remind you of your responsibility for obtaining weather from official sources and
adequately self briefing before undertaking a flight. Some information obtained over the net is "official"
but some should be regarded as a supplement only to met information obtained from official sources
and should not be relied upon as your sole source for flight planning.
Flying Club Conington has no responsibility for the content of the sites we link to but here is a
small subset of the sites you should be aware of for everyday planning.

• Met Office     Official UK Weather

UK Meteorological office supplying briefing charts, TAFs, METARs, etc. This is the main
source for the MetFax 214/215 charts. TAFs and METARs are grouped into regions and it
is often possible to get met for specific locations by using other sites.
Use is free but you do need to register on line and give a user name and password to
access. You can do that at the time of first use and the use the facilities immediately.
 
• Avbrief.com    Route Planning

Includes briefing charts, TAFS, METARs as on the MetOffice site but there is more assistance
for planning. You can specify a route and get en-route weather, distances and, airfield information.
It covers Europe and indeed the world.
You do need to register to use this site but registration is free. The information available from
the Met office is also free here but planning and other services under development require
payment of an annual fee.
 
• National Air Traffic Services     NOTAMs, AIS Publications, Airfield Charts

A very important site for getting NOTAMs, Royal Flights, navigation warnings etc. You may
also read the AIP and AICs online and get airfield information including approach charts and
COM/NAV frequencies.
 
• Interactive Flight Plan Form    Going abroad? You need one of these
  You can complete the flight plan using the form. It must then be printed and filed in the normal
  way as per instructions available on line.

 
• Foreign weather and NOTAMs

Information for foreign flights. Particularly NOTAMs and weather. Select from the drop down menu in the top left corner. Northern Europe Notams will give you NOTAMs for France etc.
 
• CAA DAP    Chart Updates

The CAA 1:500,000 and 1:250,000 charts are, of course, out of date as soon as they are published.
The Directorate of Airspace Policy maintains a list of hand updates which should be applied to
your chart. Go here for those updates.
 
 
 

Others:
There are other planning sites and weather information sites that you may wish to try.
Links to a sample of these are maintained by Kim Harris on his aviation web site. Go to
http://aviation.entrix.co.uk to browse the whole site or click here just for the planning
links.