A flight risk assessment tool (FRAT) scores planned flights against risk factors — pilot experience, weather, aircraft status, mission type — before release. Flights above a threshold require mitigation or senior approval, turning dispatch from a formality into an active safety decision.
A flight risk assessment tool (FRAT) is a structured pre-flight scoring of known risk factors: pilot experience and recency, weather versus minima, aircraft status and deferred items, mission type (first solo, night, unfamiliar field), time pressure and fatigue. Each factor carries points; the total maps to green (release), amber (mitigate or get supervisory approval) or red (do not release).
The FRAT's value is not the arithmetic — it is forcing the risk conversation before the flight, consistently, with the same questions every time. In training operations it typically lives inside the dispatch/authorisation step, with elevated scores routed to a senior instructor rather than left to the desk.
Why it matters for flight schools
Most training accidents are visible in advance as accumulations: a low-time renter, gusty crosswind near limits, an aircraft fresh out of maintenance, a get-home-itis schedule. Individually each factor passes; together they should not — and a FRAT is the mechanism that makes 'together' visible. For the organisation it also builds the safety-assurance dataset regulators increasingly ask for: score distributions over time show whether risk exposure is drifting before the incident report does.
How FlightLogger handles it
FlightLogger can attach risk assessment to the dispatch flow, so elevated-risk flights are flagged and escalated systematically — and every release carries its risk picture in the record.
Frequently asked questions
Are FRATs mandatory for flight schools?
Generally not as a named requirement, but EASA ATOs must operate risk management within their SMS, and a FRAT is the most common practical implementation for flight-level risk. Insurers and airline training partners increasingly expect one.
What should trigger a red score?
Combinations the school predefines as unacceptable — for example a student solo with crosswind at limits, or a low-recency renter at night to an unfamiliar field. The point of predefined thresholds is removing the negotiation from the moment of pressure.