1. Research – Know about the conditions you will be flying in. If you’re flying in mountainous areas know the effects of density altitude, wind, and weather and know how they will affect the performance of your aircraft.

2. Pre-Plan – We’ve all heard the phrase “fail to plan, plan to fail”. A flight that is thrown together at the last moment and is not really thought out is leaving your self wide open for mistakes and running into conditions that are beyond your capabilities. You need to plan your routes, get your weather, plan fuel stops, etc. Plan for the forecasted, and then have a back-up plan in case things are as they were on paper. Winds and weather change, don’t underestimate them.

3. Utilize Resources – Internet, weather forecast, flight service stations, airport diagrams, and AWOS/ASOS are all resources. This probably should be under pre-planning but they belong here too. Don’t just use these to pre-plan and that’s all, say your on a 3 hour cross country, what’s happening with the weather, has your airport conditions changed? On another side, you’re flying into DFW or another busy airport, a lot of things are happening all at once. Just because you’re the pilot doesn’t mean that you have to do everything. If you have a passenger, request their help, have him hold stuff for you, copy information down, or look stuff up for you. The more you utilize what you have the safer your flying will be.

4. Communicate – For large airports communication is mandatory, but what about small airports? Do you let people know where you’re at and what you’re planning to do? Most people will be clueless to your presence unless you announce it on the radio. How about in-route? The goal of ATC and flight following is not to be a nuisance, but rather warn you of aircraft in the area, pass along vital information, and if anything goes wrong they have a pretty good idea were your at and be able to find you quickly. So communicate, its safer for everybody.

5. Verify – There’s always those transmissions that you absolutely can’t understand. Or tower is reading clearances at a mile a minute and you caught about two words. It’s okay if you are not sure what they said, to ask them to repeat. Its better to use a little more radio traffic to make 100% sure what they said then to guess and get into an accident.

6. Don’t Get Pushed Around – You are the pilot in command, what you say goes. So many accidents happen when passengers push the pilot to do things that end up getting them into situations they can’t handle. You’re the one with all the training; you’re the one that knows the full situation. Don’t get pressured into tight situations.