Guide to Flying a Plane

Learning how to fly a plane can be an exciting experience.  Of course, you will need to learn certain things before you will ever be able to take off all by yourself with your very own wings.  Once you have taken the proper steps to learn how to fly a plane, you will find that a lot of great new adventures will open themselves up to you.

1. Preflight the plane.  Remove tie-downs and wheel chocks.  Check control surfaces.  Make sure that you have enough fuel and that there is no water in the tanks.


2. Start the plane.  Power up the avionics, radios and navigational equipment.  Listen to the current weather conditions. 


3. Call ground control for permission to taxi.


4. Use your rudder pedals and throttle to taxi your plane. 


5. Make sure that all of the plane’s major systems are working.


6. Make sure that nobody is ready to land right now before positioning your plane at the active runway’s threshold.


7. Take off by keeping the right rudder straight on the centerline as you accelerate.  Once you reach rotation speed pull back slightly on your control wheel to become airborne. 


8. Establish and maintain the appropriate speed for your climb.


9. Level off around 50 feet before your desired altitude.


10. Set trim to relieve controls.


11. When you reach your destination and are ready to land, you will need to determine the wind direction at the airport.  This is important because you will want to choose the runway that is most directly aligned with the wind and then land at the slowest ground speed possible.


12. Go through your “before landing” checklist (i.e. gas, undercarriage, mixture, propeller, seatbelts).


13. Turn the boost pump on.


14. Make sure the landing gear is down and locked.


15. Place the mixture on full rich.


16. Set the propeller RPM to full.


17. Make sure your seatbelt is fastened.


18. Fly at a 35 degree glide slope so that your descent will be smooth.


19. Use the VASI (Visual Approach Slope Indicator) to help you maintain your glide slope’s angle.  Make sure that you see a set of red lights overtop a set of white lights.


20. Stabilize your final approach and pick a spot on your windshield that is inline with the runway’s numbers.  Use your controls to keep inline with that spot.


21. While crossing the runway’s threshold, smoothly bring the power to idle.


22. Rotate the plane into a flare altitude (5 to 10 feet off of the runway).  Placing the dash on the horizon does this.


23. Hold your altitude so that the plane will smoothly settle onto the runway.