Building the request, field by field
It looks like a lot — it isn't. The form has many options, but most of them fill themselves in. Saved templates, Redo last GNG, drop-downs and data pulled from your aircraft and profile cut a typical request to a few clicks: pick the template, check the departure time, submit. The extra options are there to make data entry easier, not harder.
Quick start
On the Go/No-Go start page, under Start by tail number:
- Redo last GNG opens your most recent route (for example KBGR → KPWM) already filled in.
- Load template opens one of your saved templates.
Either way, set the new departure time and submit.
Choosing the briefing type
Type the tail number and press Start. The FAA registry tells us whether it is an airplane, helicopter, seaplane, glider or balloon, and the matching form opens — you never have to pick. The cards below (Airplane, Rotorcraft, Seaplane / Amphibian, Glider, Balloon) do the same thing by hand, for an aircraft not yet in the registry.
The form is in three parts: the flight, the route, and the aeroplane and load. Nothing here is decoration — every field changes something in the written analysis.
The flight
Aircraft being flown. Chosen from your aircraft. Everything the record knows — type, engines, seats, cruise speed, equipment — goes into the analysis. See Before you request.
If your profile has only one aircraft, the form selects it automatically. You can still change it before submitting.
Purpose of flight. Training, Personal, Business, Ferry, Sightseeing / aerial photography, Medical (air ambulance) and more. Helicopters use one combined Purpose & mission list — see Helicopter and offshore. Purpose changes the tone of the risk discussion: a training flight has an instructor in the loop and different acceptable margins than a business trip with a schedule pushing you.
Go/No-Go review stage. Final Preflight Check, Updated Conditions Check, or Initial Planning Check — see Review stages.
Flight rules planned. Three radio buttons — VFR, IFR, or VFR with IFR backup — shown in a framed box so the empty state is obvious and the field cannot be missed. This decides whether the report weighs approach minimums and alternate requirements, or ceiling and visibility for visual flight.
Instructor or safety pilot onboard. A name, or leave it blank. A second qualified pilot changes the pilot-readiness picture.
Flotation gear. Matters on over-water legs and shows up in the hazard discussion when your route crosses water.
The route
Departure airport and destination airport — search by identifier or by name.
Estimated time of departure. Defaults to one hour from now, rounded up to the next five minutes, in the departure airport's local time; it follows a change of departure airport until you edit it, and past times are refused. Entered in local time; the form shows the Zulu equivalent beside it, and names the destination's own time zone so an arrival across a zone boundary is never ambiguous. Weather and NOTAMs are published in Zulu, and the report matches your window to them.
Planned stop or delay en route (optional). A fuel stop or a lunch stop moves your arrival, which moves the forecast you are actually going to fly in. The computed ETA updates when you set one. When the stop is a refuelling stop at a waypoint, the form asks for fuel on board after the stop (the same Empty-to-Full quick buttons) and the report splits the fuel analysis into one leg per tank of fuel, so each leg is checked against its own reserve. You can refuel at more than one waypoint — each Refuel at … button turns on and off by itself, and No fuel stop clears them. The same after-stop fuel amount is used at every stop. Arrival time is worked out from your departure plus every leg's flight time plus 30 minutes on the ground at each stop, and arrival weather, daylight, notice timing and fuel reserve all use that time.
Alternate airport. Required for IFR, optional for VFR — and worth filling in anyway: it is useful for search and rescue, and it gives the report somewhere to send you when the destination turns sour.
Route waypoints (optional, up to three). The single biggest improvement you can make to a report. See Waypoints.
Operation profile and low-level work. For operations that are not simple A-to-B — low-level manoeuvring, survey or patrol work, or an operating area rather than a route — the form asks for the planned operating altitude AGL, a route corridor width, or an operating-area centre and radius. Give it what you have; it changes which terrain, obstacles and airspace get pulled in.
Planned cruise altitude MSL. Chosen as a band, from below 3,000 ft AGL up to the flight levels. This drives winds aloft, freezing level, icing, terrain clearance and oxygen discussion.
The aeroplane and the load
Fuel on board. Enter the fuel you will actually depart with — there are quick Empty / ¼ / ½ / ¾ / Full buttons — and the form computes your endurance from the aircraft's burn. The button you pick stays highlighted, and the same buttons appear for fuel on board after a planned fuel stop. You can override with fuel endurance in hours if you know better than the computed figure. Gliders and balloons have no fuel to plan and are labelled accordingly.
Fuel type fills in from the aircraft's FAA record — turbine engines get Jet A, piston engines AvGas — with a Set from FAA record note. When the record does not list the engine type, your saved fuel is used.
Total souls onboard. 1 through 24. Used for weight-and-balance discussion, survivability, and whether the aircraft's seating supports the plan.
Pilot notes and personal constraints (optional). Your own limits, in your own words. See Pilot notes.
Specialty sections
When the aircraft is a helicopter, seaplane, glider or balloon, extra boxes appear between the route and the notes, and fields that don't apply (fuel for gliders and balloons, IFR for gliders and balloons) disappear. Each is explained field by field in its own article:
- Helicopter request form
- Seaplane request form
- Glider request form
- Balloon request form
- Air ambulance — no extra boxes, just the purpose of flight
Specialty boxes fold with the arrow in their header and remember how you left them.
Saved templates
If you fly the same route or the same aircraft often, you can save the form as a template and load it next time in one click. Templates are available to registered pilots only; guests do not see them.
- Save as template stores whatever is on the form right now — blanks are fine. Nothing is validated when you save; validation still runs in full when you submit a real request. The departure time is never stored, because a fixed ETD is useless on a different day.
- Load a template… at the top of the form fills in every field the template saved. Fields the template left blank stay blank; the ETD is always yours to enter.
- My Go/No-Go Templates (linked from the picker, and from the dashboard Go/No-Go menu) lets you create, edit, rename and delete templates without opening a request.
- Copy a recent flight… fills the form from any of your last 25 requests. Like a template, it leaves the departure time blank so an old ETD cannot slip into a new report.
Templates never create a report, trigger billing, or run analysis. They are just a pre-fill shortcut.
The separate template editor includes the review stage, flotation gear, fuel on board and units, and fuel after a stop. If a saved template also contains specialist details that are only available on the full request form, the editor tells you rather than silently hiding them.
Before you submit
Check the ETD. More thin reports come from a departure time that drifted while you were planning than from anything else — the analysis is built around your window, and a window that has moved two hours is the wrong window.
The form also calls out details that are easy to miss: it warns before dropping a fuel stop that has no usable fuel information, marks AGL altitude as required for low-level rotorcraft work, and shows clear Use manual and Use calculated controls for endurance. Fuel loaded from a template is limited to the selected aircraft's usable capacity.
Alternate airport
When you name an alternate on an IFR flight, the report fetches its weather and notices too. If the alternate's notices can't be found, the report says the alternate isn't verified and won't call the IFR plan legal. Fuel reserve figures are worked out once by the system and quoted the same way everywhere in the report, using the IFR reserve rule (§ 91.167) on IFR flights and the 30-minute day / 45-minute night VFR rule otherwise.
Departure time guardrails
- The form refuses a departure time that has already passed (15 minutes of slack while you fill it in).
- Quick-set buttons above the time box — As entered / +30 / +45 / +1 hr — use the departure airport's local time.
Fuel guardrail
Fuel on board can't be more than the aircraft's usable capacity. If an aircraft record shows impossible fuel figures, the report flags them as invalid and holds the flight until they are corrected. When a school or operator keeps its own record for the same tail number, its fuel figures are the ones used.