Happy Advisory Circular Day!

Happy new Advisory Circular day! 

It's actually been out for about a month, but I'm slow on the uptake.

Anyways. 

FAR 91.103 is one that all pilots should be familiar with. Before you switch over to Google, it's the one about the PIC being familiar with all information pertinent to the flight. It goes on to list a handful of things you must know, but the list is hardly comprehensive (don't forget to check your runway lengths and runway performance for every departure, those are a couple of the only specifically enumerated items. You best believe I'll be asking you to calculate it during the ground portion of an exam). 

For the first 100 years of powered aviation, or so, this pre-flight information familiarization, "briefing" if you prefer, was the nearly exclusive purview of Fight Service. This put the onus of a complete and legal preflight briefing on the FAA themselves. All you had to do was make a phone call ("Hey Christa, what do I dial to get an outside line, again??). 

Then in the early aughts (which is only ten years ago...right?) along came DUATS, iDevices, Foreflight (and its better, freer cousin FltPlan.com), and all other manner of self-briefing (not dirty).

That's when things got confusing.

What constitutes a legal briefing? Does it have to be tracked somehow? What sources are allowed? That last one is even a question on the ACS. A question without a full, clear, and direct answer. Until now (now being about a month ago). 

AC 91-92 addresses self briefings (not dirty) and preflight app use, head-on (just in the nick of time, FAA!). It even provides a few checklists (which we, of course, use all the time) for various types of briefings, depending upon the situation. The AC also includes almost two pages of links to additional resources you can use for a complete, legal briefing. (Also, did you know there's an Alaska Aviation Weather Unit with free aviation weather webcams??? I do now. Thanks Advisory Circular 91-92!) 

Long story short, there's still a lot of room for pilot error in 91.103, and it's still tough for the FAA to say you messed up on 103 unless/until you mess something else up. But at least this AC provides some much needed clarity and guidance on the requirements and techniques of self briefings (not dirty), as well as their vision for the role of Fight Service in the process. 

What do you use for preflight briefings? (I know the answer is Foreflight, but I'm supposed to ask anyways).

Does this AC help clarify the requirements any?

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.list