You’re expected to be able to see other airplanes and avoid them.”Īirline pilots and private pilots certified to fly by instruments alone use a different set of charts that look like they were drawn by and for robots (more on these later).

“You can’t be in a cloud or fog that would obstruct your view. “Basically that means you have to be able to see outside,” Quinn-Narkin says. It’s used for flying under visual flight rules (commonly referred to as VFR-if you’re going to be a pilot, you’d better get comfortable with acronyms). The one above is similar to the one I saw in Half Moon Bay. In the United States, aeronautical charts are published by the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. Quinn-Narkin sells instructional videos for pilots online, and he recently volunteered to help me make sense of these maps, which pilots use for planning and navigation. “It looks pretty complicated, doesn’t it?” says Brendan Quinn-Narkin, a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor in Northern California. But superimposed on that familiar landscape were cryptic numbers, strange symbols, and overlapping circles that hinted at an entirely different world in the skies above. The coastal mountains and cities scattered around San Francisco Bay were easily recognizable. The first time I saw an aeronautical chart, best I can recall, was at the little airport café in Half Moon Bay, California, while waiting for a table.

Air navigation charts