Diverting to a different airport

When Point A to Point B won’t work

March 8, 2023 By Jill W. Tallman

In the cross-country phase of your flight training, planning a flight and flying a flight are the goals.

Click on image for high-res picture. Illustration by Charles Floyd

With the help of your flight instructor, you choose a destination and complete your preflight planning to ensure you have all the available information you need, your airplane has sufficient fuel for the trip, and the weather is within your tolerances. With a flight instructor by your side, that’s usually what happens.

After you’ve earned your certificate, the occasional flight may throw you a curve. Headwinds that weren’t forecast can cause you to burn more fuel than you had planned. A passenger can become airsick halfway to the destination. A mishap at your destination airport can close the only runway. Crosswinds at your destination could prove to be more than your skill level and the airplane’s design limit can handle. What to do? Find another place to land. Here are the elements of a diversion under visual flight rules.

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Before you take off

Diversion planning doesn’t have to be done on the fly—it can be a calm and measured part of your preflight planning on the ground. Simply add another step to your decision making: “Where will I go if I can’t land here?” Weigh your options without the pressure of flying an airplane, then add that destination—with radio frequencies, runways, and other pertinent information—to your flight planning documents.

Why not just ‘NRST’?

Some GPS units have a “NRST” (“nearest”) function that, when activated, points you to the nearest airport. That’s fine if the nearest airport meets your needs. But it might not. It might not have avgas for sale. Its runway may be too short for comfort. Or, in my own experience when looking to land to avoid an approaching thunderstorm, the nearest airport would have put me directly in the storm’s path. “NRST” is a handy tool, but know before you go there.

Thumb joint shortcut

Using a paper chart with no plotter, you can roughly estimate the distance between your location and your destination using your thumb’s first joint, representing about 10 nautical miles. With an EFB like ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot, pinching and holding your fingers next to the route gives you the distance in nautical miles. —JWT

Jill W. Tallman

AOPA Technical Editor

AOPA Technical Editor Jill W. Tallman is an instrument-rated private pilot who is part-owner of a Cessna 182Q.

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