A personal minimums checklist is a short written list of numbers you’ve decided you will not fly below: a ceiling, a visibility, a wind and crosswind limit, a stricter set for night, and a recency trigger. You fill it out at the kitchen table, when nothing is riding on the answer, then compare the forecast against the paper on flight day instead of negotiating with yourself. That’s the whole mechanism. The pilot standing on the ramp with the airplane fueled, passengers loaded, and a return time already promised is not the pilot you want deciding what a 1,200-foot ceiling means.
Most advice stops at “know your limits,” which is worth nothing. A limit you can’t state in feet and knots is a mood. Here’s the framework, filled in with my real numbers.
Regulations are the floor, not the target
Read 14 CFR 91.155 and you’ll see why you need your own numbers. In Class E below 10,000 MSL, basic VFR is 3 statute miles of visibility with cloud clearances of 500 below, 1,000 above, and 2,000 horizontal. In Class G during the day, below 1,200 AGL, it drops to 1 mile and clear of clouds. Legal, and a miserable afternoon of squinting at traffic you won’t see until it’s close. Fuel reads the same way: 91.151 lets you plan to land with 30 minutes in the tanks, 45 at night.
Learn the flight categories, since every briefing and color-coded map uses them. The one that matters here is MVFR: a 1,000 to 3,000 foot ceiling and/or 3 to 5 miles of visibility. Almost every hard weather go no go call I’ve made lived in that band, which is where a number you wrote down last month does the work your optimism won’t.
The five numbers worth writing down
Fill these in for one airplane and one kind of flight. A set that covers both pattern work at home and 300 miles over high terrain covers neither.
- Ceiling. The lowest reported or forecast ceiling you’ll depart under, plus a higher number for cross-country. Terrain drives it. If the ridge on your route is 3,000 feet, a 3,500-foot ceiling is a squeeze.
- Visibility. In statute miles, comfortably above 3. Low visibility makes a familiar airport hard to find and traffic effectively invisible.
- Wind and crosswind. Total surface wind and crosswind component, plus the largest gust spread you’ll accept. A steady 20 is easier to land in than 12 gusting 24.
- Night. Its own row: higher ceiling, more visibility, airports you know, and a landing-recency rule of your own on top of 61.57 (three takeoffs and landings in the preceding 90 days, and to carry anyone at night, three of them to a full stop flown between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise, which day versus night currency works through).
- Recency. How many days off before the next flight has to be a benign one. Mine is 21 days for solo local work, 60 before I want a CFI in the right seat.
What mine look like
I fly a 172 out of KOAK and trained at KLVK, so my numbers come from two local problems: a marine layer that doesn’t always burn off when the TAF says it will, and an afternoon wind through the Altamont.
- Day, local: 3,000 ceiling, 6 miles, 18 knots total wind, 12 knots crosswind, gust spread of 10 or less.
- Day, cross-country: 4,500 and 8 miles, with fuel that puts me on the ground with an hour left instead of the legal half hour.
- Night: 5,000 and 8 miles, airports I’ve landed at in daylight, three landings in the previous 30 days.
- One hard stop: no departure if the forecast has the destination going MVFR before my ETA.
The crosswind number needs a caveat. The 172’s book figure is a maximum demonstrated crosswind component of 15 knots, which is what a test pilot managed on a good day in a new airplane. Mine sits at 12 because that’s where my landings stay repeatable. Check your own POH, then ask your CFI what they’ve watched you handle.
Adjust for the things that stack
Risk factors don’t arrive one at a time. The FAA’s PAVE checklist in the Risk Management Handbook (Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment, External pressures) makes you look at all four at once, and IMSAFE covers the pilot column: illness, medication, stress, alcohol, fatigue, emotion. Each item below raises your numbers.
- First flight after more than three weeks off.
- An airport you’ve never flown into, especially a short or unlit one.
- Passengers, and worse, passengers with a schedule.
- Terrain or open water with no easy diversion.
- Anything that trips IMSAFE, including the four hours of sleep you’re calling six.
Two of those on the same day is my default no-go regardless of the weather.
Scud running, and the one number that prevents it
Scud running is working your way along underneath a low ceiling, staying clear of clouds by trading away altitude, and navigating visually off roads, rivers, shorelines, or terrain. Almost nobody plans it. It shows up as an ordinary cross-country where the ceiling comes down two hundred feet at a time and every descent feels reasonable, right until the terrain rises to meet you or you enter cloud and lose control.
The guardrail is one number. Decide the lowest en route altitude you’ll accept to stay visual, write it in AGL, and treat it as a floor. Mine is 1,500. If staying VFR requires going lower, the flight is over and the only questions left are which airport and whether I need a rental car. Making that call in your kitchen is much easier than making it at 1,100 feet with rising ground ahead.
Instrument pilots run the same structure with different numbers: a floor above published minimums, and an alternate that’s genuinely better rather than technically legal. The 61.57(c) currency requirements keep you legal, not sharp.
The go/no-go questions
Numbers only help if something forces you to look at them. These are the five I run out loud before I touch the airplane.
- Am I inside every one of my written numbers, or am I about to make an exception? Exceptions get made on the ground, in ink, before the flight exists.
- What single condition would turn this into a no-go, and what does the current observation say about it?
- What’s my out? Name the airport, the heading, and the fuel that gets me there.
- Is there any part of this plan I’d describe differently to my CFI than to my passengers?
- If nobody were waiting on me, would I still go?
Number five catches the most. External pressure is the P in PAVE nobody writes down, and it’s why a careful pilot launches into a forecast they’d have laughed at on a Tuesday.
Borrow a pilot who isn’t going
This comes up constantly in the go/no-go threads on Pilots of America, and it’s the best addition I’ve made to my process. Before a marginal flight, call a pilot who isn’t coming with you. They have nothing invested: no hotel, no passengers, no airplane already topped off.
Give them the inputs, not your conclusion: the TAF, the current METARs, your minimums, your hours in type. Then stop talking. If they hesitate, the hesitation is the answer. Two flights of mine have died this way, and both looked correct by the next morning.
Keep it where you’ll actually read it
A personal minimums card in a drawer is decoration. Put the numbers on the front page of the checklist you already carry, or first in your checkride binder, so the gate sits ahead of the preflight. Same design rules as any good checklist: short, fixed place, legible at arm’s length, which how to build a checklist covers in depth. Whether it lives on paper or in your EFB matters less than whether you see it first. Adding a Personal Minimums block to a 172 checklist in the editor takes four minutes.
Then set a review schedule: after each phase of training, after any long layoff, twice a year otherwise. Numbers come down only with real experience behind them, and never on the ramp. Confirm anything regulatory against the current FAR/AIM and take your first draft to your CFI, who knows things about your flying that you don’t. The student pilot hub has the handbooks and weather sources I used.
Common questions
What are personal minimums?
Personal minimums are a short written list of conditions you've decided in advance you won't fly in: a ceiling, a visibility, a total wind and crosswind number, a stricter set for night, and a recency trigger for how long you'll go between flights before the next one has to be an easy one. You set them when nothing is riding on the answer, then compare the forecast against the paper on flight day instead of arguing with yourself.
Do personal minimums have to be stricter than the FARs?
That's the point of having them. 14 CFR 91.155 allows 1 statute mile and clear of clouds in Class G below 1,200 AGL during the day, and 91.151 lets you plan to land with 30 minutes of fuel in daylight. Both are legal and neither is a target. Your minimums sit above the regulatory floor by a margin you picked on the ground.
What's a reasonable starting point for VFR personal minimums?
For day local flying in a trainer, a 3,000-foot ceiling, 6 miles of visibility, 18 knots of total surface wind, a 12-knot crosswind component, and no more than a 10-knot gust spread is a defensible starting set. Raise the ceiling and visibility for cross-country, raise them again for night, and confirm the crosswind figure against your POH's maximum demonstrated crosswind component with your CFI before you commit to it.
What is scud running?
Scud running is working your way along beneath a low ceiling, staying clear of clouds by trading away altitude, and navigating visually off roads, rivers, shorelines, or terrain. It usually begins as an ordinary cross-country where the ceiling drops a couple hundred feet at a time and each descent feels reasonable on its own. The guardrail is a written minimum en route altitude in AGL: reach for it and the flight is over.
How often should I update my personal minimums?
Review them after each phase of training, after any long layoff, and roughly twice a year otherwise. Numbers should only come down with real experience and a CFI's involvement behind them. What you never do is edit them on the ramp with the airplane fueled and passengers waiting.