Weather to pilots: FU

How learning to fly taught me to chill out

FU, stated the weather chart in bold, dashing hopes of going flying. No, not the abbreviation that might initially spring to mind, but the official aviation weather designation for smoke — from the French, fumée.

This smoke was from the Australian bushfires, travelling some 2,000km across the Tasman Sea and blanketing the skies of New Zealand’s North Island. Apart from that, it was a glorious week weather-wise, but the smoke particles reduced the horizontal visibility to 5km, far below my school’s minima of 16km required for cadets to go flying solo.