Course vs Heading explained in under 60 seconds ✈️

Ajouté : 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Hey student pilots, I have a super common check ride question for you. And that is, do you know the difference between course and heading? I'm going to give you 5 seconds to think on it, and then we're going to dive into the answer. 5 4 3 2 and 1.

[00:00:16]I'm going to draw two points here on my whiteboard to give us a good visual for this problem.

[00:00:25]I'm going to have point A and point B.

[00:00:27]That line that I just drew right there, that's our course.

[00:00:33]Our course is simply the line between two points on our map.

[00:00:39]Now, we know that obviously to fly this, if there's any sort of wind, we can't just point whatever the course is. We're going to have to correct for wind.

[00:00:46]And the where we're pointing our nose in the air, that is going to be our heading. So, if I have my winds coming here, we'll say kind of coming from the north, I'm going to have to point my nose into the wind.

[00:00:59]That where that nose is pointed, that is my heading.

[00:01:03]And the the line between the two points I'm going to, that's my course. A common term we'll also hear is our track. The only difference between a course and a track is that our course is what we've planned, and our track is what we're actually doing over the ground.

[00:01:17]Hopefully this explanation helps simplify these concepts for you. Let me know if you have any questions or need me help.