FRAT — Flight Risk Assessment Tool
AeroCopilot's FRAT is an IMSAFE + PAVE artifact: 15 checkboxes, a live 0-21 score, and GO / MITIGATE / NO-GO thresholds, persisted to your flight plan.
FRAT — Flight Risk Assessment Tool
The FRAT is the briefing's structured pilot-and-mission risk artifact. It replaces the older "Compliance Risk: 50/100" placeholder with a real IMSAFE + PAVE assessment — 15 checkboxes across four categories, a live 0-21 score, and a deterministic GO / MITIGATE / NO-GO threshold. It cites AC 120-92B and FAASTeam Single-Pilot Resource Management material.
The 15 checkboxes
The Part 91 FRAT used in the briefing breaks into four blocks:
| Block | Items | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| IMSAFE | 6 | Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Eating / Emotion — the personal-readiness self-assessment. |
| PAVE — Aircraft | 3 | Aircraft-side risks: airworthiness, equipment, performance margins. |
| PAVE — Environment | 3 | Weather, terrain, time of day. |
| PAVE — External | 3 | Get-there-itis, passengers, schedule pressure. |
Each checkbox is a binary risk flag. The FRAT is a discipline tool — it forces the pilot to look at every category, not a lookup table that decides for them.
Scoring and thresholds
The score is computed live as you tick boxes, on a 0-21 scale, with these thresholds:
- ≤ 3 → GO
- 4–6 → MITIGATE (proceed with documented mitigations)
- > 6 → NO-GO
The thresholds are deterministic and visible in the UI; there is no hidden weighting. AI does layer in on top to provide an explanation and mitigation recommendations (Anthropic Haiku on the Part 91 path), but the score itself is rule-based.
The Part 91 FRAT is metered per tier — Free 0/mo, Student 5/mo, Pilot 20/mo, Pro 40/mo. Tier limits gate AI explanation and persistence, not your ability to think about risk.
Persistence and integration
A submitted FRAT is persisted with Zod validation on read so a partially-saved or schema-evolved record degrades safely. The persisted assessment:
- Attaches to the flight plan (FRAT-to-Flight Plan link), so the risk assessment travels with the route.
- Feeds the Ops Authority Panel as one of the five composite inputs (alongside §91.103, compliance, airworthiness, and the Risk Window decision).
- Is queryable through the AI tool getFratHistory, which lets the copilot reason about your FRAT trend over time.
- Renders into the briefing PDF, including a black-and-white print mode added during the briefing audit.
A "Risk trend alerts" pattern detector watches for repeating risk factors across recent assessments and surfaces them — for example, the same fatigue flag four flights in a row.
HEMS FRAT (Part 135 helicopters)
Part 135 air ambulance operators have a separate, heavier FRAT — 20 risk factors across 4 categories on a 4-tier risk scale, built per AC 135-14B. The HEMS variant:
- Persists to the
FratAssessmentmodel with an explicit decision enum (GO / MITIGATE / NOGO). - Includes a mitigation textarea and a "Print for OCS" button (Operations Control Specialist handoff per 14 CFR 135.619).
- Keeps a 30-day rolling history visible to the OCS.
- Is referenced under 14 CFR 135.617 (risk assessment for HEMS operations).
The HEMS FRAT is one of the six cards on the HEMS Launch Strip (/helicopter/launch) — Weather, FRAT, Scene LZ, Fuel, Crew, Roll-up — which produces a single GO/NO-GO decision for the launch authorization.
What the FRAT is not
The FRAT does not declare your flight legal or illegal. It does not replace §91.3(a) — the pilot in command remains the final authority. It is a structured artifact: it records that you considered the right categories, scored them honestly, and either accepted the risk, mitigated it, or stood the flight down.
If the FRAT says MITIGATE, write the mitigation in the textarea before submitting. The mitigation text travels into the briefing PDF and the Ops Authority Panel, and is part of the evidence chain if the flight is later reviewed.