A support system for safer aviation decisions
PlaneWX goes beyond the briefing
A weather briefing is necessary, but it is just one input in the decision to launch. Airline crews have a dispatcher and a chief pilot backing up that call. Most general aviation pilots have neither. PlaneWX is the decision support system for GA, built around one loop on every flight: Brief. Assess. Decide. Debrief.
Most bad launches are not mysteries. They are late decisions.
Hotels are booked. Passengers have rearranged work. The airplane is reserved. Then the night before, "we'll see" becomes "we have to be there." By then you are not deciding. You are rationalizing.
You fly on your own time, often with family aboard. You deserve the standard paid pros hold: a weather briefing scored against your personal minimums and aircraft, an honest self-assessment, and a real option to stay home. That is what a decision support system is for: pressure-testing the flight while a change of plan is still a change of plan.
Brief: Weather against your minimums
A solid weather briefing is the objective truth of the outside world: ceiling, visibility, wind, icing, convective trends. PlaneWX scores it with a WX Score from days out to hours out. Your personal minimums are built in. The WX Score cannot generate without them, and they sit front and center on every briefing, not in a sheet filed away after a checkride.
Assess: A FRAT for the trip you are flying
In the final hours, the FRAT unlocks: Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment, External. Currency. The airplane. Airport and traffic complexity. Schedule, passengers, and the pressure to get there. It pulls from your live briefing, aircraft limits, and profile, so it reflects this mission, not a static form. Require it before every flight if you choose. That is a professional habit.
Decide: Fly or Stay
Then you make the call. Staying is a legitimate outcome, not a failure.
Debrief: Close the loop
After the flight, or the flight you skipped, a Self Debrief feeds your next FRAT. Pilots who debrief a flight are about twice as likely to run a FRAT on the next one.
A mentor when you want one
Good pilots miss their own blind spots. A mentor is optional, and you open it, at any step of the loop. Your mentor sees your exact briefing and the concerns you flagged before they accept. Standing Mentors are coming soon.
PlaneWX works alongside your EFB, which stops at weather data. It does not replace charts, filing, official weather, or pilot-in-command judgment.
When the window is the mission
This summer, Flight Chops used PlaneWX to pick a weather window for flying de Havilland Chipmunks from Windsor, Ontario, to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, early enough that the airplanes could move when the weather said yes.
"PlaneWX is a new supporter of @flightchops and it was a particularly helpful tool while we figured out which weather window to fly the Chipmunks to get them from the Canadian Aviation Museum (in Windsor near Detroit) to Oshkosh."
Before you promise a departure day, run the loop, not just the weather. Start at planewx.ai. Brief a real trip. Work the FRAT. Make the call. Debrief when you land. Fly like it's your job.
