AI is being marketed to general aviation pilots from every direction right now. Some of it is genuinely useful. Some of it is dangerous. Most of the conversation conflates the two. Here's an honest look at what an AI copilot can actually do for a GA pilot today — and the specific things it should never be trusted to do.
What “AI copilot” actually means
The term has been stretched to cover everything from a chatbot bolted onto a flight-planning app to dedicated reasoning models trained on aeronautical data. For this article, by “AI copilot” we mean a system that takes structured flight context — your route, your aircraft, current weather, terrain, NOTAMs, your recent flight history — and produces useful natural-language output: briefings, assessments, summaries, decision support. Fly Overhead's RightSeat AI copilot is one example of this; there are a handful of others in the market.
The line we'll draw all the way through this article: an AI copilot is a thinking partner, not a navigator, not an instrument, and not an authority. The pilot in command retains sole responsibility for the safe operation of the aircraft — the same as it's always been.
Six things a good AI copilot can actually do well
1. Generate a real pre-flight route brief in seconds
Take your departure, route, and arrival. Pull the relevant METARs and TAFs, the en-route winds, the SIGMETs and AIRMETs, any TFRs along the track, NOTAMs at both ends, and the terrain profile of the actual course. Synthesize all of that into a 60-second read that flags the things that matter: the icing layer between FL080 and FL120, the thunderstorm building over the second waypoint, the runway closure at destination, the headwind that pushes your fuel reserve below comfort.
A pilot used to take 20-40 minutes to pull this together by clicking through ForeFlight or 1800wxBrief and reading raw data. A good AI brief delivers the same situational picture in under a minute. The pilot still verifies the underlying data — but starts the verification from a thesis instead of a blank page.
2. Ground analysis in real terrain data
The version of AI that wasn't worth using a year ago was a chat model guessing at terrain heights. The version that works now uses actual digital elevation model (DEM) data — the same 30-meter grid the FAA uses — and reasons over it. Ask it whether your filed route at 9,500 feet clears the mountains between you and your destination, and a competent AI copilot pulls the DEM strip under the track, compares peak elevations to your planned cruise, and tells you where you have 2,000 feet of clearance and where you have 500.
That's a different category of tool than a chat model. It's worth asking any AI flight-planning product what their terrain source is. If the answer is hand-wavy, it's probably hallucinating.
3. Turn a 90-second voice memo into a logbook entry
After the flight, tap record. Talk into your phone for 90 seconds: “Flew KOAK to KSFO with one passenger, light winds, two go-arounds on the practice approach because of wake turbulence from a 737 ahead, 30 minutes of actual instrument time in the marine layer.” The AI transcribes, extracts the structured fields (route, duration, conditions, lessons), and offers you a logbook row to confirm or edit. The lessons-learned section — the part most pilots stop filling in after 200 hours — becomes effortless.
4. Answer real questions about flight rules and procedures
“What's the difference between an MEA and an MOCA?” “Can I land on a private grass strip with passengers under Part 91?” “What's the legal IFR alternate requirement if my destination forecast shows broken at 800 and 2 miles?” An AI copilot trained on the FARs and AIM answers these in seconds with the relevant citations. It's not a substitute for knowing the regulations — but it's a faster lookup than the printed AIM and more confident than a Google search through a hundred forum posts.
5. Surface patterns in your own flying you wouldn't notice
“Your last three flights, you've been arriving at KPAO with less than 45 minutes of reserve. Want to talk about that?” A good AI copilot with access to your flight history finds the patterns humans miss: drifting habits, currency lapses, an airport you keep planning into despite poor weather every time. This is the kind of coaching a CFI would give you every flight if a CFI were sitting next to you every flight.
6. Compress the boring parts of flying
Filing IFR. Generating weight and balance. Cross-referencing the FAA registry to figure out what type rating a borrowed aircraft requires. Pulling up the destination's NOTAMs and translating the acronym-laden NOTAM text into a sentence. These are tasks where the cognitive cost of doing them yourself is high and the cost of an error is low — perfect targets for an AI copilot.
Five things an AI copilot should never do
1. Be your primary source of navigation
The displayed track is not the cleared track. The AI's position estimate is not your real position. Your certified GPS, sectionals, and the controller you're talking to are the authority. Any AI copilot worth using is explicit about this. Fly Overhead is explicitly advisory only and not certified for primary navigation — and that's the truthful posture for every AI copilot on the market today.
2. Make your go/no-go decision
It can inform the decision. It can list the reasons to delay or scrub. It can compare conditions to your personal minimums if you've set them. It cannot make the call. If an AI tells you “safe to depart,” you should treat that with the same skepticism you'd treat a stranger at the FBO who said the same thing — informative, possibly correct, not authoritative. The decision is yours.
3. Replace your training in an emergency
Engine failure on takeoff: pitch for best glide, identify a landing spot, run the memory items. You don't pull out your phone. AI is useful in the planning room and the de-brief; it's not the tool you reach for in the first 30 seconds of an actual emergency. Train and brief like the AI doesn't exist, because for those 30 seconds, it doesn't matter.
4. Be trusted when you can't verify it
AI hallucinates. Even good models, on aviation topics, occasionally invent waypoint names, misstate regulations, or confuse runway numbers. The mitigation isn't to stop using AI — it's to use it for tasks where you can verify the answer cheaply. A route brief you cross-check against a current METAR is safe. A regulatory citation you cross-check against the actual FAR is safe. An AI-generated approach plate read-out, accepted without looking at the chart, is not safe. Pick tasks where verification is part of the workflow.
5. Replace official charts, plates, or NOTAMs
No AI tool today is certified for instrument procedure information. The legal source is the FAA-published chart. Use AI to summarize what's on the chart, to highlight what changed since last time, to point out the missed approach point. Don't use AI as the chart itself.
How to evaluate an AI copilot before you trust it
- Ask what data sources it grounds in. Real terrain data (DEM), real weather feeds (NWS Aviation Weather Center, NEXRAD), official NOTAMs, real airspace boundaries. If the answer is vague, it's probably guessing.
- Test it on something you already know the answer to. Ask it to brief a route you flew last week. Compare its output to what you actually saw. If it invents details, that's your ceiling.
- Check how it handles uncertainty. A good AI copilot says “I don't have current NOTAM data for this field” instead of making something up. Vague confidence is a warning sign.
- Look for citations. When the AI gives you a regulation, does it tell you which FAR? When it gives you a weather observation, does it tell you the station and timestamp? Citations let you verify in seconds.
- Notice the legal posture. Any product that claims AI can replace certified navigation or charting is overselling. The legitimate position is “advisory only, pilot in command retains responsibility.”
Where Fly Overhead fits
Fly Overhead's Electronic Flight Bag pairs live ADS-B traffic and IFR/VFR charts with the RightSeat AI copilot. The pre-flight brief grounds in real DEM terrain data and the same NWS weather feeds professional dispatchers use. The voice debrief auto-fills your logbook. The pre-flight smart brief surfaces patterns from your own recent flights.
We're honest about the trade-offs: the EFB is advisory only, pilots should use FAA-approved charts and a certified GPS for primary navigation, and the AI copilot is a thinking partner, not an authority. The Basic tier is $7.99/month, Professional is $13.99/month. See all plans.
You can also use the live flight tracking map for free without any of the AI features — useful by itself for situational awareness around your departure or destination airport.