President Dwight D. Eisenhower is credited with saying “I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. It is pretty much inevitable that plans will go wrong, after all, and that no matter how many factors you account for there will always be something you neglect to consider. But if, in that moment of chaos, you can recall what led you to decide on a course of action and come up with a work-around or back-up, the planning process ultimately proves its worth.

Take Dai here in this lovely sketch from , for example. Flight planning is a lengthy and complicated process in which one has to consider, among other things, wind speed and direction, fuel capacity and consumption, cruise speed and altitude, and aircraft weight (for smaller aircraft, forgo breakfast to arrive a minute or so early :P). Now, wind speeds change, one may choose to cruise at a higher or lower altitude depending on conditions, and you might well have a hearty breakfast that morning to the detriment of your weight and balance calculations. But knowing what to look out for makes expecting the unexpected that much easier.

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