Personal Minimums Worksheet for VFR Pilots

A personal minimum is a number you write down on the ground, above the legal minimum, that tells you when you will not fly. The FAA's own definition comes from Susan Parson's Getting the Maximum from Personal Minimums (FAA Aviation News, May/June 2006, still distributed by the FAASTeam). Personal minimums are "an individual pilot's set of procedures, rules, criteria, and guidelines for deciding whether, and under what conditions, to operate (or continue operating) in the National Airspace System." The same guide offers the better one-line version: "the human factors equivalent of reserve fuel."

The guide opens by observing that most pilots agree with the idea and few have ever written the numbers down. The worksheet below fixes that. It follows the structure of the FAA's two-page Personal Minimums Worksheet (FAA Safety Briefing, March/April 2015, pages 31 and 32), trimmed to what a VFR pilot needs, with blank cells to fill in by hand. Print this page, sit down with your logbook, and give it twenty minutes.

Why the legal minimums are not your minimums

The regulations set floors, and they are low. In Class G by day, at or below 1,200 feet AGL, 14 CFR 91.155 allows VFR in 1 statute mile of visibility, clear of clouds. In Class E below 10,000 feet MSL it is 3 statute miles and 500 feet below the clouds; the whole table is in VFR weather minimums by airspace. The fuel rule, 14 CFR 91.151, lets an airplane depart VFR with fuel to reach the first point of intended landing plus 30 minutes at normal cruising speed by day, or 45 minutes at night. The preflight rule, 14 CFR 91.103, requires you to know the runway lengths and the takeoff and landing distance data for every flight, and the weather and alternatives for any flight not in the vicinity of an airport. None of those rules says a word about how many hours you have.

PHAK FAA-H-8083-25C, chapter 2, puts the gap plainly: "One of the most important concepts that safe pilots understand is the difference between what is 'legal' in terms of the regulations, and what is 'smart' or 'safe' in terms of pilot experience and proficiency." The handbook's example is a crosswind. The flight manual may list a maximum crosswind component of 15 knots while the pilot has handled 10, and "the 10 knot crosswind experience level is that pilot's personal limitation until additional training" raises it. The airplane's number did not move. The pilot's did.

That is the whole method in miniature: the limit is what you have done, not what the airplane or the regulation permits.

The FAA's method in three moves

The FAA worksheet runs six numbered steps, and they collapse into three moves: build a baseline from what you have already done, adjust it for the conditions of a specific flight, and revisit it on the ground over time.

Baseline first. The 2006 guide asks for the lowest weather "that you have comfortably experienced as a pilot in your VFR and, if applicable, IFR flying in the last six to 12 months." Comfortably is the operative word. For wind, the guide wants the most challenging conditions you have comfortably experienced, "not necessarily the most challenging wind conditions you have managed to survive without bending an airplane." It is blunt about runways too. If you have never used a runway shorter than 5,000 feet, the shortest-runway box says 5,000 feet.

The baseline is sorted by flight category, which the FAA worksheet tabulates as VFR (ceiling greater than 3,000 feet AGL and visibility greater than 5 miles), MVFR (1,000 to 3,000 feet and/or 3 to 5 miles), IFR (500 to 999 feet and/or 1 mile to less than 3 miles) and LIFR (below 500 feet and/or less than 1 mile). Those are sorting labels, not regulations; Flight categories explained covers where they come from.

Adjust second. Step 5 of the worksheet lists four kinds of trouble (pilot, aircraft, environment and external pressures, spelled out in Part 4 below) and for each one tells you to add at least 500 feet to your ceiling, add at least one half mile to your visibility, add at least 500 feet to your required runway length, and subtract at least 5 knots from your winds. The 2006 guide says these are suggestions, that pilots with limited or infrequent experience "might want to double these values," and that stacked conditions stack: a night flight to an unfamiliar airport after a full workday "suggests that you should at least raise your baseline personal minimums by adding 1,000 feet to your ceiling value; one mile to visibility, and 1,000 feet to required runway length."

Revisit third, and only on the ground, which gets its own section below.

The worksheet

Fill the left column from your logbook, the middle column with the number you choose as your baseline, and leave the right column for the day of a flight. Where a line does not apply, write "not yet" rather than leaving it empty; a blank reads as permission six months from now.

The adjustment amounts in Part 4 are the FAA's "at least" figures from Step 5 of the Personal Minimums Worksheet; the doubling advice and the rule that stacked conditions add together are from the 2006 guide. The fuel line's legal floor is 91.151. Read the forecast line from the TAF's worst group (How to read a TAF) and the density altitude line from your own arithmetic (Density altitude explained). The runway-margin line is our addition: the PHAK warns that "Aircraft performance figures and the AFM are based on a brand new aircraft flown by a professional test pilot," which is why the book number alone is not a minimum.

Part 1 is not decoration. The 2006 guide asks for a "Certification, Training, and Experience Summary" before any weather number is written, because thirty hours in the last year and three can produce the same baseline ceiling and should not.

Worked example: a 60-hour private pilot in a 172

Suppose a pilot passed the private checkride four months ago with 48 hours, has flown 12 hours since, all of them in the same Cessna 172 from the same home airport, and sits down with the logbook. This is a hypothetical, built to show the arithmetic.

Part 1 says: private, no ratings, 60 hours total, 12 in the last 12 months as a certificated pilot. Landings: 18 in the last 90 days, two of them crosswind landings worth the name, and no night flying at all since the checkride. Last flight: nine days ago.

Part 2, from the logbook and memory: the lowest ceiling flown comfortably as a private pilot was about 3,500 feet, the lowest visibility 7 miles in summer haze, both by day. The night rows get "not yet." The baseline is therefore a 3,500 foot ceiling and 7 miles by day, and no solo night cross-country until a few night hours with an instructor fill the row.

Part 3: steady wind 15 knots, gusts to 20, and a crosswind component of about 8 knots. The shortest runway used was 3,000 feet, and that is the baseline. Suppose the POH landing distance over a 50 foot obstacle comes to about 1,500 feet at this pilot's usual weights (an illustrative figure; read your own POH); 3,000 feet is twice that, and twice the book is the margin written on the required-runway line. Fuel: one hour at cruise on landing, double the 91.151 daytime floor.

Now a specific flight: a 90 nautical mile trip to an airport this pilot has never seen, departing at 5 p.m. on a Friday after a full day of work, with a friend who has booked dinner at the far end. Part 4 marks three conditions: environment (unfamiliar airport), pilot (fatigue), external pressure (the dinner). Three conditions, so three of each adjustment: 1,500 feet onto the ceiling, 1.5 miles onto the visibility, 1,500 feet onto the runway, 15 knots off the winds. Today's numbers are a 5,000 foot ceiling, 8.5 miles, 4,000 feet of runway, and a wind line at zero, because 15 knots off a 15 knot steady-wind baseline leaves nothing and takes the 8 knot crosswind line below it. Fuel is unchanged.

A wind line at zero is not an error in the arithmetic. It is the method saying three stacked conditions have used up all the wind experience this pilot has.

The worksheet stops there. Whether Friday's METAR and TAF clear those numbers is a comparison this pilot makes, worst TEMPO group counting, not a verdict anyone else can supply. What the exercise bought is that the comparison is now between two sets of numbers, one of which was written when nobody was waiting for dinner.

How to raise or lower a number honestly

Raising a minimum needs no process. If a flight at your baseline frightened you, the number was wrong, and the guide's instruction to record what you have "comfortably" flown already tells you to move it up.

Lowering one has rules, and the FAA wrote them down. First: "never adjust personal minimums to a lower value for a specific flight." Second: "keep all other variables constant. For example, if your goal is to lower your baseline personal minimums for visibility, don't try to lower the ceiling, wind, or other values at the same time." Third: the time to consider it is after you "have comfortably flown to your baseline personal minimums for several months," and the guide's own example is modest, moving a 5 mile daytime visibility minimum to 4 miles. Fourth: do not lower anything on a day with a special condition present, such as an unfamiliar airplane or fatigue. The guide closes by suggesting you "talk through both your newly-established personal minimums and any 'push-the-envelope' plans with a well-qualified flight instructor."

The honest way down is to buy the experience. Fly with a CFI on a 4 mile day, or into a 2,200 foot runway, and then move the number. The crosswind example in PHAK chapter 2 says the same thing: the 10 knot pilot becomes a 15 knot pilot through "additional training with a certificated flight instructor," not by meeting 15 knots on a trip home.

Set on the ground, never in the airplane

The 2006 guide's two-sentence rule: "Changing personal minimums 'on the fly' defeats the purpose of having them in the first place," and "The time to consider adjustments is when you are not under any pressure to fly." PHAK chapter 2 agrees: "To develop a good personal minimums checklist, you need to assess your abilities and capabilities in a non-flying environment, when there is no pressure to make a specific trip."

The pressure is what the worksheet is for. The PHAK's list of external pressures includes "the desire to satisfy a specific personal goal ('get-home-itis,' 'get-there-itis,' and 'let's-go-itis')," and its test for the moment you have started negotiating is short: "if you find yourself saying that it will 'probably' be okay, it is definitely time for a solid reality check."

So the procedure on the day is mechanical. Pull the METAR and TAF for departure and destination, decode them at FlyFren's airport weather page or wherever you brief, and write the reported ceiling, visibility, wind and the worst forecast group in the right-hand column next to your numbers. Then compare, line by line. The only thing you are allowed to change in that column is the weather.

Keep the printed sheet in your logbook, date it, and redo Part 1 every six months. A personal minimum that is older than your last 20 hours is describing a different pilot.

This article is educational and is not a substitute for the current regulations, the AIM, official weather briefings, or instruction from a CFI. Check the current text at the linked sources before you rely on any detail.