One of the hardest parts of flying in the UK remains the decision making process before you even get airborne
How to find weather forecasts for pilots can appear to be an impossible task. And even if you do find it, how on earth do you make sense of it all? Studying the weather before you fly is vital as a helicopter pilot. And like many things with helicopter flying, what at first seems incredibly complicated, begins to take shape.
If you wish to know more about how helicopter pilots find aviation weather forecasts and relate this information to everyday flying, then these PDF guides will help.
There are free to download and use, whether you are a Yorkshire Helicopters pilot or flying elsewhere in fixed wing or helicopters.
How to Access the Weather
Many people think that aviation weather forecasts are hidden away that only professional pilots are allowed to access. In fact, this vital weather information is available to everyone, you simply need to know where to look. Best of all, it’s a free service made available in the UK by the Met Office. Our PDF download shows where to find the general aviation related weather and how to create an account to log in.
How to Read Pilot Weather Forecasts
Once you have access to your Met Office weather account, you will need to log in and find the information that you will need to make decisions on your flight.
The most important, of course, is simply, “Should I fly today?” When you first commence your helicopter pilot training, your instructor makes these decisions for you, of course.
However, as your training progresses, you will be expected to become ever more familiar with the environment in which we fly and how the weather affects us until eventually, you will be able to brief your instructor on the weather and what you think it means.
Finally, as a qualified helicopter pilot, you will be able to assess the weather yourself and make that important decision:
Should I Fly Today?
Our PDF download gives you an example of a typical day in autumn/winter and explains how to read the information and decide what to do. It’s purely an example, however the weather information used was real on that day.