IFR Alternate Planning Checklist

Two separate tests pilots conflate: (1) DO I NEED an alternate — yes unless the destination forecast, from one hour before to one hour after ETA, shows at least 2,000-ft ceilings and 3 SM visibility (and always yes if the destination has no instrument approach). (2) DOES MY ALTERNATE QUALIFY — at ETA it must forecast at or above alternate minima: standard 600-2 precision / 800-2 non-precision, unless the chart publishes non-standard minima or prohibits the airport as an alternate entirely. Then 91.167 prices it in fuel. Filing is the legal layer; the briefed route and honest fuel to a REACHABLE alternate is the survival layer.

Single pilots need them more: there's no second crew member catching the omission, no dispatcher sharing the workload, and the same regulatory accountability. The professional pattern scales down cleanly — this list run alone IS the dispatch function for an owner-flown operation, and the ten minutes it costs is the cheapest copilot available. Adapt the items to your operation; keep the discipline.

By design: operational records are sensitive, and the simplest privacy guarantee is never transmitting them. Local-only storage means zero servers, zero breach surface and zero subscription. If you work from several devices, keep one as the master record and move snapshots with the CSV export.

Yes — one click exports your complete planning record as a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. The export preserves every column exactly as entered, so you can print it, attach it to paperwork, or hand it to an inspector, buyer or insurance underwriter as a supporting summary alongside your official records.