DON’T PANIC & REMEMBER THE 7 C’s
CONFIRM
- Verify Your Heading
- Enroute Check Points – Locate Landmarks
- Check The Elapsed Time Since Departure
- Use your airspeed to calculate how far you have travelled.
- Use ALL available resources
- GPS, Utilize the aircraft GPS (IF INSTALLED)
- Pilot Application such as Foreflight, Garmin Pilot, Google Maps etc on a table, phone or other tech to locate your position.
- Utilize VOR, Tune to a known local VOR and determine the radial you are on
CLIMB (if able)
- Gives better visibility (of landmarks etc)
- Better range for Nav aids (e.g VOR)
- Better VHF comms radio range
- CIRCLE
CIRCLE
- Don’t continue to fly in a given direction if you don’t know where you are heading.
- Perform turns around a point.
- Try to spot your last checkpoint
- Try to figure out your position as you circle.
COMMUNICATE
- Try to contact any nearby facilities (Towered airports, FSS, Unicom etc) Use the frequencies from your charts, Chart Supplement, GPS, Flight App, Chart Supplement etc
CHECK FREQUENCIES
- Attempt to contact ATC on last used frequency or a known local ATC frequency.
IF THE SITUATION IS THREATENING THE SAFETY OF THE FLIGHT (e.g LOW FUEL) YOU CAN DECLARE AN EMERGENCY ON 121.5 AND SQUAWK 7700
CONFESS
- Explain your situation to ATC / Guard
- What the plan for you fight was.
- That you are uncertain of your position.
COMPLY WITH ATC INSTRUCTIONS
- If you request assistance from ATC comply with instructions and requests for information.
- If you are unable to comply with ATC instruction notify ATC of this with “unable” and the reason!
- If you need to speak in regular English to explain the situation / emergency do so! It is important to be clear and concise to make the situation understood for the facility to provide assistance.