Part 91 Hawaii Flight Course - How To Fly A Jet To Hawaii

Description

Welcome to the Part 91 Hawaii Flight Course by Oregon Flight School. My name is Michael Carlini, founder of Oregon Flight School, and I am a part 91 corporate pilot based in Oregon as well as a certificated flight instructor.

This is the course that I wish had existed the first time I flew to Hawaii! This course is an overview of topics and procedures one should know as a Part 91 pilot before operating an aircraft between the United States Mainland and Hawaii. This course is a compilation of information gathered through experience flying as well as information researched and studied within primary FAA and ICAO sources on the subject and secondary sources from other experienced pilots and publications. This course is designed to give the first-time oceanic pilot a broad exposure to flying these Hawaii routes. It is a place to begin, so that on the day of the flight, you show up with some idea of what to expect. This course may also be useful as a refresher course if it has been awhile since you have flown these routes.

My experiences inspired me to create this course because until now, there was not a resource where all the information relevant to a pilot flying under Part 91 between Hawaii and the Mainland could be found in one spot. Though ICAO documents and FAA Advisory Circulars were out there, neither of these sources gave a play-by-play example of what a Part 91 Hawaii flight looked like start to finish, nor did they filter the relevant information from their thousands of pages. Part 121 and 135 operators had training programs and regulations to provide their pilots plenty of guidance for the trip, but that was no help to the Part 91 pilot who was left to dig around themselves to try to find what they needed to know. Being paired with an experienced oceanic pilot was - and is - essential to making this flight safely, but that isn’t enough. To understand the whole picture, you need to spend time becoming familiar with a number of topics including oceanic airspace procedures and contingencies, long range navigation equipment, communication, and how various critical points within the flight are computed, to name a few. Completing this course will provide you with familiarity and confidence such that when you show up on the day of the flight, you will be ready and able to fully contribute as a member of the crew.

This course is not a fully-comprehensive course on oceanic flying. This course is specific to flights between the US mainland and Hawaii only.

This course will briefly touch on the automated communication and position reporting found in FANS-equipped aircraft, such as CPDLC and ADS-C - but only to such an extent that you become familiar with what it is.

This course does not discuss Part 121 or Part 135 regulations or procedures.

In the interest of full disclosure, this course is also not an official FAA-approved training course. Oregon Flight School is not associated with any kind of Part 141 or Part 142 FAA-approved training center. This course is for informational & expository purposes only, and should not be considered ground training as defined by FAR 61.1. You will receive no FAA WINGS credit, nor will completion of this course renew currency of any kind. You will not receive any kind of certificate, endorsement, or logbook sign-off upon completion.

Besides certain LOAs that may or may not be applicable to you and your aircraft, there are no FAA or ICAO training requirements specific to Part 91 oceanic flight between the mainland and Hawaii other than ICAO Annex 6 requiring pilots to be aware of laws, regulations, and procedures that are applicable to where they will be flying. This course will cover laws, regulations, and procedures applicable to flying between the United States mainland and Hawaii. LOAs aside, If you are already certificated and otherwise legal to fly the type of aircraft that can make the flight, and you are aware of applicable laws, regulations, and procedures for the route of your flight, as far as the FAA and ICAO are concerned, you are legal to make these Hawaii flights. The only place the FAA mentions anything about specific training - its advisory in nature - is in the most recent FAA Advisory Circular 91-70 which describes examples of “relevant subject matter...with which you should be familiar in order to operate in oceanic...airspace,” and this course will go through almost all of the subject matter in that list. Note that Advisory Circular 91-70 was written to cover all oceanic and remote continental operations, so this course will only include subject matter relevant to part 91 flights between Hawaii and the mainland.

Last but certainly not least, this content is current as of August 2021, and it is very important that you make sure you are up-to-date on the latest FAA and ICAO rule changes, because they do change. You are responsible for knowing and abiding by the most up-to-date FAA and ICAO regulations and procedures.

This course is broken into sections, and sub sections. Section 1 is this introduction. In Section 2, General Considerations, I will discuss the broad areas of background knowledge that one should have before flying to Hawaii. This includes discussing ICAO, Oceanic Airspace, HF Radios, San Francisco Radio, Routing, Equal Time Points, Plotting, and many more. In Section 3, I will walk through a Hawaii flight from start to finish and give a play-by-play of what one might expect when planning and executing a trip to Hawaii, as well as specifics on what to do and how to do it. Section 4 will contain procedures for abnormalities and contingencies as well as the conclusion of the course. Let’s get started.

TAKE THIS COURSE