Training and Safety Tip: The fine line between 'legal' and 'smart'
Understanding weather minimums
As I stared at the computer screen mounted high in the corner near the terminal’s ceiling, I experienced what flight instructors call “recall failure.”
That’s when you know something but can’t quite access the information in your head. It’s the mental equivalent of misplacing a logbook or a file. The information is in there—you just can’t find it when you need it.
This mattered because—for the first time in my flying life—it, well, mattered. The computer monitor in the corner was showing a solid overcast at exactly 1,000 feet. Not 1,001. Not 999. But exactly 1,000 feet. I had never seen that happen. And, because of my recall failure, I wasn’t sure if that ceiling placed the field under visual or instrument flight rules. Funny the difference 12 inches can make.
As the cure for recall failure is knowing where to look up the information and then refiling it, I reached for my iPhone. “Hey, Siri, …”
Now that I have everyone doubting their own recall, the answer is that 1,000 feet is part and parcel of the VFR ecosystem. You’ll find that in FAR 91.155: Less than 1,000 feet is generally instrument territory. I say “generally” because in aviation, there are always exceptions. In this case, those exceptions are: Special VFR authorizations—where air traffic control can give you its blessing to operate VFR with lower than VFR ceilings or in visibilities lower than those established for the class of airspace—and Class G airspace, where during daylight hours there’s no established ceiling, just the requirement to remain clear of clouds.
Of course, with the clouds flying at pattern altitude, I wasn’t going up to join them, even though it was legal. In aviation, legal doesn’t always equate to smart: something that’s always easy to recall.
