The hazard of high-tech flying is that devices, reliable though they may be, can and do fail. You'll be better prepared to cope if you challenge yourself to practice low-tech (or no tech) flying with your flight instructor.

Try navigating without any type of screen; calculate your weight and balance, wind correction, and fuel requirements by hand; land without visual approach slope indicator (VASI) or precision approach path indicator (PAPI) lights to guide you on final approach. These skills are fun to hone and will help in the event technology fails due to lack of electricity, overheating, or another malfunction.

With the help of technology, we have learned to follow the magenta line to stay on course, and we rely on the guidance and warnings that modern devices provide to help us along the way. This includes alerts about terrain, weather, airspace, and other traffic in the area. We can even navigate to the nearest airport—and dial up all the details about it—with the push of a button.

While it is admittedly unlikely that avionics or iPads will fail in flight, every pilot should know how to navigate safely without relying on electronics, which includes knowing how to access information about nearby airports and radio frequencies another way, and how to get to where you want to be from where you are without that magenta line to follow. Knowing how to read paper charts, proficiency in the use of navigation radios and directional gyros, and being well-versed in pilotage might help you sail through a checkride, and these low-tech skills could prove even more useful than that.

While we may not think of landing guidance such as VASI and PAPI lights as “high tech,” they do provide information that is not available at all airports. If you are used to this type of guidance, fly to an airport without that equipment. It is good practice to fly a stabilized approach, maintaining proper airspeed and glidepath, without the visual aids.

We are so fortunate to have technology that makes flying safer, but that doesn’t relieve any pilot’s responsibility to be ready and able to aviate, navigate, and maintain situational awareness without the extra help.