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Pre-Flight Briefing Overview

How AeroCopilot's pre-flight briefing covers 14 CFR 91.103, produces a FAA-defensible PDF, and routes you through Threat Board, Risk Window, and FRAT.

Pre-Flight Briefing Overview

The AeroCopilot briefing is a structured pre-flight artifact built to satisfy 14 CFR 91.103 — "Preflight action" — and to serve as a defensible record if a flight is later reviewed. It pulls weather, NOTAMs, TFRs, SIGMETs, airport data, and aircraft-aware compliance into one document, runs it through a single Go/HOLD authority, and produces a server-rendered PDF you can hand to a dispatcher, a chief pilot, or an FAA inspector.

What the briefing produces

Each generated briefing yields three artifacts:

  • An on-screen briefing view organized into 35+ sections (flight summary, weather, NOTAMs, route hazards, performance, compliance, FRAT, Risk Window, Ops Authority).
  • A server-side PDF at /api/briefing/[id]/pdf rendered by Puppeteer, paginated with a SHA-256 Briefing-ID (BR-XXXXXXXXXXXX) on every page header.
  • An evidence chain — the Briefing-ID hash plus a Zulu Briefing generated: timestamp — so the artifact survives a Letter of Investigation review.

FAA charts (Airport Diagrams, IAP / SID / STAR plates) are rasterized inline via pdf-lib, so the PDF is self-contained rather than a list of links.

14 CFR 91.103 backbone

The briefing is built around the affirmative preflight action checklist — runway lengths, takeoff and landing distance, fuel, alternates, traffic delays, weather, and airworthiness verified — with each row tagged green or red and labeled with its data source (NASR, AWC, POH).

Aircraft-aware regulatory rows are layered on top, including:

  • §91.151 fuel reserves (helicopter day VFR = 20 min per §91.151(b); helicopter IFR = 30 min per §91.167)
  • §91.155(b) helicopter VFR minimums (Class G ≤1,200 AGL day = 1/2 SM clear of clouds)
  • §91.157 Special VFR option, surfaced when applicable
  • §91.7(a) / §91.409 / §91.411 / §91.413 / §91.207 airworthiness inspections plus ARROW documents, each with a CFR citation and time-remaining color code
  • §91.169 IFR alternate 1-2-3 rule check on the destination forecast

TAF group weighting follows AC 00-45H §5.11 (PROB30 0.3, PROB40 0.4, TEMPO 0.6, BECMG 0.85, FM 1.0).

How the four briefing modules fit together

The briefing routes you through four decision surfaces, in this order:

  1. Threat Board — active threats on or near the route (TFRs, SIGMETs, smoke, AQI, space weather), filtered to your corridor.
  2. Risk Window Gate — a mandatory acknowledgment when your ETD intersects a forecast IFR or thunderstorm window.
  3. FRAT — IMSAFE + PAVE assessment with a live-computed 0-21 score and GO / MITIGATE / NO-GO threshold.
  4. Ops Authority Panel — a single composite verdict (CLEARED / HOLD / NO-GO) that combines the §91.103 checklist, compliance, airworthiness, FRAT, and the Risk Window decision.

The Ops Authority Panel is the only verdict you need to read at the end. Earlier surfaces feed it; they do not contradict it.

Briefing diff since last refresh

Each briefing snapshot is persisted to FlightPlan.briefingSnapshot. On reopen, AeroCopilot computes a delta against the prior snapshot and surfaces NEW / UPDATED / EXPIRED badges across METAR, TAF, NOTAM, SIGMET, and TFR sections, along with a top banner summarizing what changed since you last looked.

The snapshot read path is Zod-validated, so a malformed historical snapshot degrades safely rather than blocking the briefing.