flight plan

noun

: a usually written statement (as by a pilot) of the details of an intended flight (as of an airplane or spacecraft) usually filed with an authority

Examples of flight plan in a Sentence

The pilot filed a flight plan before taking off.
Recent Examples on the Web To dodge federal interdiction teams, some pilots filed flight plans for one airstrip, then diverted to another. Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica, 14 Mar. 2024 Controllers can transmit flight plans to the craft, but Mars is too far from Earth for direct guidance. George Petras, USA TODAY, 5 Feb. 2024 The Smiths’ plane took off from Carrizo Springs in Dimmit County near the Texas-Mexico border shortly before 11 a.m. Smith was operating on an instrument flight rules flight plan and had obtained an electronic weather briefing that morning, the NTSB report said. Harriet Ramos, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 31 Jan. 2024 Next is a computerized system for air traffic controllers to enter flight plan changes for communication through digital communication to aircraft. Michael Barnard, Forbes, 2 Mar. 2024 Abdulrahim has done a variety of flight plan skywriting projects, usually a combination of aerial art with an advocacy aspect to it. Robert A. Cronkleton, Kansas City Star, 9 Feb. 2024 The flight plan called for the spacecraft to land with a purely vertical velocity of just 2 mph, roughly a moderate walking pace. William Harwood, CBS News, 24 Feb. 2024 Astrobotic's original flight plan would have taken Peregrine on one long elliptical loop around Earth, then the spacecraft would have reached the Moon during its second orbit. Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 22 Jan. 2024 Mathias says that while NORAD has a good intelligence assessment of his sleigh’s capabilities, Santa does not file a flight plan and may have some high-tech secrets up his red sleeve this year to help guide his travels — maybe even artificial intelligence. Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 25 Dec. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flight plan.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1936, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of flight plan was circa 1936

Dictionary Entries Near flight plan

Cite this Entry

“Flight plan.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flight%20plan. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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