Student Pilot's Blog

Reading skills for a METAR REPORT 🛫 What's a METAR?  A METAR (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) is an essential weather report for pilots, air traffic controllers, and airport operators, ensuring safe flight operations. Even if it looks like a confusing mix of letters and numbers, a METAR is actually a helpful, standardized report that gives you a quick, real-time snapshot of the weather conditions at an airport. This guide will gently guide you through how to read a METAR, explaining its parts and common abbreviations step by step. ✈️ Understanding the Structure of a METAR  A METAR report follows a specific, fixed sequence of elements. By knowing what each part represents, you can quickly interpret the weather information. Here's the general order of a METAR, using RKSI (Incheon International Airport, South Korea) as an example. Example METAR for RKSI: METAR RKSI 250901Z 27015G25KT 8000 +TSRA BKN050 Q1013 "This example will be used to explain each par...

Aviation Weather Observation(metar, speci, special)  Aviation weather observation provides critical meteorological information necessary for safe flight operations. At airports, various weather elements are constantly measured and reported, supporting air traffic controllers and pilots in planning and executing safe flights. Unlike the weather forecasts that the general public sees on TV or mobile apps, aviation weather reports are written in specialized abbreviations and numeric codes . While they may look meaningless to non-aviators, for controllers and pilots they are a vital source of information.