Fuel Planning
Taxi + climb + cruise + reserve + alternate → required fuel. VFR day, VFR night, IFR all baked in. Enter your aircraft numbers; we do the moment math against your tanks.
Trip
Total cross-country distance to destination.
Planned cruise GS — wind-corrected from /tools/wca.
Drives the reserve requirement.
Aircraft
From POH cruise-performance table at your planned altitude / power.
Higher than cruise — typically 9 gph for a 172, 11+ for a Cherokee 180.
From POH time-to-climb table for cruise altitude.
Ground ops
Engine-start to takeoff roll. Default 15 min is the CFI rule-of-thumb.
Alternate (optional)
Leave blank if no alternate filed. IFR §91.169 may still require one — check your weather.
Tanks (optional)
From POH — usable, not total. 172R/S = 53 gal, Cherokee 180 = 48 gal, Arrow = 72 gal. Adding this enables the verdict.
Verdict
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Enter trip distance, ground speed, and cruise GPH to see required fuel. Add tanks for the verdict.
Breakdown
Taxi + climb + cruise + alternate (reserve is held, not flown).
About this calculator
Standard cross-country fuel planning: taxi + climb + cruise + reserve + (optional) alternate. Burns are computed at the rates from your POH performance section. Reserve duration is mandated by reg: 30 minutes for VFR Day (§91.151(a)(1)), 45 minutes for VFR Night (§91.151(a)(2)) and IFR (§91.167(a)(2)) — all at normal cruise consumption.
The verdict band (safe / caution / marginal / over) compares total required against tanks usable. The cutoffs (75% / 90% / 100%) are the standard one-person-SaaS-meets-CFI rule-of-thumb — legal-minimum doesn't mean comfortable, and weather, holds, and a diversion can eat the reserve fast. When in doubt: fuel stop.
AutoBrief
AutoBrief factors fuel reserves into the GO/NO-GO — and flags flights where the planned fuel is marginal before the student even pre-flights.
AI pre-flight GO/NO-GO for flight schools.