Certified Flight Instructor - Flight Instructor Airplane Practice Exam

If an aircraft is 8 miles off course after flying 150 miles, how much correction is needed for the remaining 160 miles?

1. 6°.

2. 9°.

3. 12°.

4. 15°.

The correct answer is: 6°.

To determine the necessary correction angle for an aircraft that is 8 miles off course after flying 150 miles, a few concepts in navigation and trigonometry are applied, specifically involving the use of the tangent function in a right triangle. The first step is to visualize the situation. The aircraft has traveled 150 miles along its intended course but has drifted off course by 8 miles. This creates a right triangle where the hypotenuse represents the actual flight path, the adjacent side represents the distance traveled (150 miles), and the opposite side represents the distance off course (8 miles). Next, to find the correction needed for the remaining 160 miles, it is helpful to calculate the angle at which the aircraft would need to adjust its heading. The tangent of the correction angle can be calculated using the formula: tan(θ) = opposite / adjacent. In this case, the opposite side is the 8 miles off course and the adjacent side is the total distance to correct over, which includes both the distance already traveled (150 miles) and the remaining distance (160 miles). First, we can approximate the distance needed to correct by recognizing that the total distance traveled is the hypotenuse of a larger triangle formed by the total distance (150