Weather
Ice, thunderstorms, turbulence, and fog—sometimes the decision to launch is easy, but sometimes there are nuances and forecast elements that are worthy of more careful consideration. Learn more about hazardous weather from AOPA's resources.
AOPA Weather
Our online weather app can be used to retrieve METAR and TAFs around a chosen airport, along a stored AOPA Flight Planner route or for one or more weather stations.
ASI Educational Resources
Visit ASI's collection of videos, courses, webcasts and quizzes to brush up on your weather knowledge, or learn from where other pilots went wrong with Accident Case Studies and Real Pilot Stories.
Cold Weather Ops
The challenges of winter flying can be summed up in four words: cold, ice, snow, and wind. Every day's a weather day after the first snowfalls of winter arrive in colder regions. Now a whole set of conditions, accompanied by a cryptic stream of abbreviations to describe them, shows up.
Hurricanes
Each hurricane season, our members call or email AOPA for advice on how best to prepare their aircraft for the coming storm. This subject reports provides tips for anchoring your aircraft to ride out the storm as safely as possible, as well as suggestions on when and where you should relocate your aircraft if you have the opportunity.
Windy Flight Ops
Every pilot loves a tailwind! But, strong crosswinds on landing are another story. Wind is a factor in a large percentage of takeoff and landing accidents and as pilots we need to constantly be vigilant of its direction and speed in relation to the runway. In flight, wind will blow us off course unless we correct for its effect.
Density Altitude
Throughout a pilot's flight training, there is instruction, and likely some experience of the detrimental effect high density altitude has on aircraft performance. But when the sky is blue and the summer sun is hot, even seasoned pilots can forget to carefully calculate takeoff, climb, cruise, and landing performance during preflight planning.