Definition
Informal, practical reasonableness checks a pilot applies to verify that flight planning numbers, instrument indications, or operational decisions actually make sense in the real world, rather than accepting them solely because they came from a calculation, an app, or an instrument.
Plain English
A quick sanity check. After you work something out or read something off an instrument, you stop and ask, 'Does this answer actually make sense for what I'm doing?' If it doesn't, you investigate before acting on it.
Context Anchor
Seen in flight review guidance for instructors who are evaluating whether a pilot is ready to keep operating safely as pilot in command.
Derivation
“Crosscheck” means to check one thing against another instead of trusting only one source. In this phrase, the instructor is checking the pilot’s performance against several practical references, such as safety, rules, aircraft limits, and the actual situation.
Why Pilots Care
Catches obvious safety gaps that standard procedures might miss and supports sound decision-making.
Intuition Check
Do not read “common sense” as casual opinion or a shortcut. Here it means practical judgment checked against safety, rules, aircraft limits, and the real situation.
Example Sentence 1
When the flight planning app showed a 45-minute leg, she ran a common sense crosscheck against her usual cruise speed and realized she had entered the wrong destination airport.
Example Sentence 2
During the ground portion of the flight review, common sense crosschecks revealed the pilot had not considered the impact of a nearby temporary flight restriction.