Roy Smith wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:


You can't spend $8 on a WAC chart? G Your school or FBO doesn't
have one on the wall that you can use for free?

Yes, and yes. However, I was going to do the flight planning tomorrow
and I can't get a WAC that quickly (the "local" FBO doesn't stock them)
and the FBO is 35 miles away and I'd rather not drive 70 miles with gas
prices at $3/gallon if I don't have to.


Maybe I'm being a little silly here, but I'm thinking a commercial pilot
should be up to a higher level of flight planning. Your boss is going to
say, "I need to be in XYZ for a 9:00 AM meeting; get me there". It's your
job to figure out a good airport that's close to XYZ, has approaches
appropriate for the weather, all needed services available, ground
transport arranged for, and worked into the schedule, etc. Nowhere in that
scenario does "the dog ate my chart" seem like a useful thing to say.

I don't disagree, but there are two reasons I'm not too worried about it
at present.

1. I just learned I would be able to get next week off on vacation and
am trying to get my commercial flight training accelerated into next
week as much as possible as I'm taking a masters program and have only
one week between semesters. I wasn't planning to fly next week until a
couple of days ago.

2. I have no plans to ever actually fly commercially (I make way more
than almost any commercial pilot as an engineering manager). I'm
getting the license purely for the challenge and to have an excuse to
fly and train. So, I'm probably not "thinking commercially" because I
have no plans to fly commercially.


Matt