FAR Ninety-One One Oh Three, Preflight Action, and the Two Words 'All Available' That Turn a Fun Cross-Country Into a Safe One

Before any flight, FAR 91.103 (“Preflight Action”) legally requires the pilot in command to “become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.” For every flight that means weather, fuel requirements, alternatives, and known traffic delays; for a cross-country it adds two more items - runway lengths at airports of intended use and takeoff and landing distance data. Those two words - “all available” - are the entire foundation of safe cross-country planning.

What Does FAR 91.103 Actually Require?

The regulation is short enough to fit on an index card. It states that each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.

That phrase - all available information - is doing the heavy lifting. Not some information. Not the app that happened to be open on your phone. All of it.

The rule then specifies that for any flight, this must include: weather reports and forecasts, fuel requirements, alternatives available if the flight can’t be completed, and any known traffic delays.

For a flight not in the vicinity of an airport - a cross-country - it adds two more requirements: runway lengths at airports of intended use and takeoff and landing distance data.

That’s four requirements for every flight, six for a cross-country. Every one of them exists because a real pilot got bitten by ignoring it. The regulation is a list of the ways accidents happen, written backwards.

Why Isn’t Checking the Weather at My Home Field Enough?

The weather over your head tells you almost nothing about the weather at your destination. “Become familiar with all available information” doesn’t mean glancing at the radar.

It means pulling the Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFs) for your departure, destination, and everything in between. It means checking winds aloft - because 30 knots on the nose at 6,000 feet will rewrite your entire fuel plan. And it means getting a standard weather briefing that walks you through the synopsis, current conditions, and outlook.

Picture a Saturday. Severe clear at your home field, light wind, blue sky. You launch for lunch at an airport 300 miles away feeling great. What you didn’t check was the destination.

240 miles away, a marine layer hasn’t burned off, or a front is sagging down from the northwest that the morning forecast said would arrive at 2:00 p.m. You have perfect weather overhead and a wall you can’t see at the far end. All available information would have shown you that front hours earlier - at your kitchen table, with every option still open.

How Much Fuel Do I Legally Need for a Cross-Country?

The regulation says “fuel requirements,” and it leans on the VFR fuel rules to define them. For day VFR, you need enough fuel to reach your first point of intended landing and then fly, at normal cruise, for at least 30 minutes afterward. For night VFR, that reserve is 45 minutes.

Those are the legal minimums - and this is where the regulation and good judgment part ways.

30 minutes is the floor, not the plan. Thirty minutes of fuel calculated on a good day, with a fresh engine and a book that assumed perfect leaning, is not where you want to be when the airport below just went to low ceilings and the next one is 25 minutes away.

The practical target: plan for one hour of fuel on the ground when you land. Build the pad in. Nobody has ever landed with too much fuel and regretted it.

How Do I Plan Alternates the Right Way?

The regulation explicitly requires “alternatives available if the planned flight cannot be completed.” In plain language, the rules are telling you to plan for the flight not working - before you leave.

Don’t just look at your departure and destination. Study the middle of the route on your sectional. Where are the airports along the way? Which have fuel? Which have a longer runway, an instrument approach if the ceiling drops, or a rental car and a hotel if spending the night becomes the smart move?

Build this habit: at every checkpoint on your nav log, ask one question - “If the engine got rough right now, or the weather closed in right now, where am I going?”

If you always know the answer, you’ve turned “all available information” into a decision you’ve already made - so you don’t have to make it in a hurry with your heart pounding.

Do I Really Need to Check NOTAMs?

Yes. Known traffic delays and NOTAMs (Notices to Air Missions) are folded directly into “all available information.”

On a short VFR hop, traffic delays are usually minor. But flying into a fly-in, or into a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) going up for a sporting event or presidential visit, is a known delay - and NOTAMs are where you find it.

NOTAMs also reveal the traps that end trips on the ground: the runway closed for construction, the one instrument approach out of service, the airport shut down for an air show. The day you skip them is the day you fly 300 miles to a closed runway. Check NOTAMs for every airport you might touch, plus anything on the route.

Why Are Runway Length and Takeoff/Landing Data Listed Together?

Because one is meaningless without the other - and the regulation pairs them on purpose.

A runway length is just a number on a chart: 2,100 feet. Is that enough? You have no idea until you open the performance section of your Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) and calculate how much runway your airplane actually needs on this day, at this weight, at this airport.

Here’s the part that catches pilots: those charts don’t describe your home field on a cool morning at sea level. Your destination might sit at 4,000 feet of elevation and hit 95°F by afternoon. That’s density altitude, and it doesn’t care how the airplane felt this morning.

Consider a mountain strip you fly to for breakfast. You land in cool morning air with plenty of runway to spare. By 1:00 p.m., the sun has cooked the valley to 95°F, and that same runway now demands roughly 50% more distance to get airborne. Same runway, same airplane - but as far as the air is concerned, a completely different airplane.

If you ran those numbers at the kitchen table that morning, you already knew to leave early, burn off weight, or pick another airport. If you didn’t, you’re standing at the end of the runway doing math you should have done in your pajamas.

Your Complete Cross-Country Planning Checklist

The night before - or the morning of - sit down with the whole picture:

1. Pull a full weather briefing. Departure, destination, en route, winds aloft, and the outlook past your planned arrival. Look at destination weather specifically and honestly.
2. Run your fuel. Legal reserve is the floor. Give yourself an hour of fuel in the tanks after landing.
3. Pick your alternates. Not one - several, spread along the route, each with fuel, runway, and an out if the weather sinks.
4. Check your NOTAMs. Every airport you might touch, plus the route.
5. Open the performance charts. Runway lengths against real takeoff and landing distances at the real temperature, elevation, and weight.

Do this and you haven’t just satisfied 91.103 - you’ve done what the regulation was always after: arriving at the runway having already met every problem the flight will hand you, back when you had coffee in hand and every option open.

The first few cross-countries, this takes an hour and feels like a chore. By your tenth, it takes 15 minutes and stops feeling like a rule - it becomes the way a pilot thinks. That’s the whole point: the regulation isn’t trying to slow you down. It’s trying to turn you into the kind of pilot who is never surprised.

The regulatory language comes straight from Part 91 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, and the performance and weather planning maps directly to the cross-country planning tasks in the Airman Certification Standards (ACS). Read both in your own words this week.

Key Takeaways

• FAR 91.103 requires “all available information” - four items for any flight (weather, fuel, alternatives, traffic delays) and two more for cross-countries (runway lengths and takeoff/landing distance data).
• Weather at your departure field tells you nothing about your destination - pull TAFs, winds aloft, and a full briefing for the entire route and outlook.
• Legal fuel reserves (30 min day, 45 min night) are the floor, not the plan - target an hour in the tanks on landing.
• Density altitude can add ~50% to your takeoff distance by afternoon - run POH performance numbers against real temperature, elevation, and weight.
• Always know your alternate - at every checkpoint, ask where you’d go if the weather closed in or the engine ran rough.