Learn to read aviation weather and charts

Start with a live tool, then go deeper. Every reading guide is linked from the point in the tool where you would actually want it.

Try it live

• Live weather extremes worldwide

  The lowest visibility, lowest ceilings and strongest winds being reported anywhere on Earth right now — plus the most complex METARs currently in circulation. Tap any group in a report to decode it in place.

Reading guides

• How to read a METAR

  Field by field through an observation: wind, visibility, cloud layers, temperature and dewpoint, altimeter and remarks — plus why only BKN, OVC and VV count as a ceiling.

• How to read a TAF

  Validity periods and change groups. What FM, BECMG, TEMPO and PROB30 actually mean, and how to pull the forecast for your arrival time out of one.

• VFR, MVFR, IFR and LIFR explained

  The exact ceiling and visibility thresholds behind the four colours, and why a green airport can still have cloud at 400 feet.

• How to read an instrument approach plate

  The five sections of every US approach chart, what IAF, FAF, MAP and MSA mean, and a briefing order that works.

• Flight planning, step by step

  Route, cruise altitude, winds aloft, the heading chain from true to compass, fuel with honest reserves, and choosing an alternate.

• PIREPs, AIRMETs, SIGMETs and TFRs

  The products that cover the route rather than the airport — how to decode a PIREP, and what each advisory does and does not promise.

About these guides

They are written to be read before a flight, not during one, and they aim to be honest about the limits of each product rather than just describing its format. Where a guide says how something appears in Flight Kneeboard, that reflects what the app actually does — the thresholds quoted are the ones in its own code.

Nothing here is a substitute for training, the regulations, or official publications.