About Open Checklists

Free aircraft checklists, airport information and pre-flight tools for pilots of ultralights, light-sport, experimental and certified aircraft.

Open Checklists started with a ParaPlane PM-2 powered parachute and a simple problem: the aircraft that most need a good checklist — Part 103 ultralights, kit-built experimentals, modified airframes — are the ones least likely to have one. The site collects open, machine-readable checklists that anyone can read on a phone, print, fork for their own aircraft, and download in any format.

Around the checklists sit the tools a pilot reaches for in the ninety seconds before a flight: airport facts, runways and frequencies for every public and private US airport from the FAA's 28-day data, live weather and NOTAMs, a multi-leg flight planner, a logbook, and the FAA's own training handbooks, searchable.

Who runs it

Open Checklists is built and run by Allen McGhan, an aircraft builder and pilot, as the open data layer alongside the Junco open-source instrument project. The code and the checklist format are open source on GitHub.

How it is paid for

The site is free to use and is supported by advertising and affiliate links. Ads are kept off checklists, the editor, the planner and your account pages. See privacy and terms.

What it is not

Nothing here is approved aeronautical data or an official weather briefing. Every checklist says where it came from and whether anyone has checked it; read how to read a file before relying on one.

Questions, corrections or partnership ideas: contact.