Plan and execute course of action

The moment you know where you are, the emergency is over — what's left is ordinary navigation to a known place, with one catch: the fuel clock has been running the whole time.

Pick a destination and heading

Choose a known, reachable place and commit to it:

• The nearest suitable airport — apply the same selection criteria as a diversion (VI.C): usable weather, fuel range, a runway you can use.
• Or a big, unmistakable landmark — a coastline, a major highway, a city — that you can navigate confidently from even if you're not yet sure of the exact point.

Then set a heading and a time/fuel checkpoint: "I should cross the river in about eight minutes; if I don't, I'm not where I think I am." The checkpoint is what keeps a fix you got slightly wrong from quietly becoming a new lost situation.

Worked through: you've fixed your position as ten miles southeast of Centerville with about forty minutes of fuel. The nearest suitable field is Plainview — fifteen miles northwest, VFR, with fuel. You set heading 310 and a checkpoint: a highway you should cross in about six minutes. You fly it, cross the highway on schedule, and the situation is genuinely over. Had that highway not shown up on time, you'd stop, hold heading, and re-fix before going a mile further.

Proceed and reassess

Before you commit, do the fuel arithmetic out loud, because it decides everything downstream: usable fuel in minutes, minus the time to your chosen field, minus a reserve you won't touch. If the field is fifteen minutes out and you have forty minutes in the tanks, you have margin to fly it and still re-fix if it goes wrong. If it's thirty-five minutes out on those same forty, you don't have a plan — you have a gamble, and the honest move is a nearer field even if it's less convenient. The number, not the hope, picks the destination.

Fly the plan, then check it. At the checkpoint, confirm you reached what you expected. If you did, the situation is resolved and you're just flying. If you didn't, you're honestly back in S1, re-fixing — and that's a fine outcome, far better than pressing on toward a guess.

One important branch: if fuel or weather is now tight, proceeding to a field is a diversion, and you should make that decision deliberately — the VI.C call about which field and why — rather than reflexively aiming for "home." Lost-and-low-on-fuel is exactly the situation where "nearest safe field" beats "the one I meant to go to." Pride wants the original destination; airmanship takes the reachable one. Once you're established toward a known field with a checkpoint and a fuel number, the "lost" label is already gone — you're just flying a slightly different plan than the one you filed.