Thanks to Jeppesen for making this story possible. Check out the full series here. And if you want to know why we fly with Jeppesen, learn more about their IFR charts here.

When you're transitioning from FAA charts to Jeppesen charts, one of the biggest differences is where you find airport information like runway distances, airport lighting, alternate minimums, and takeoff minimums.

Jeppesen charts list all of that information in one place: the 10-9 page. And once you get used to it, it makes IFR planning and flying much easier.

We'll start by breaking down the different sections of the 10-9 page, but first, here's what a 10-9 page looks like:

This is the 10-9 page for Hayden, Colorado, but all 10-9 pages look similar. And, they all follow the same format, with 5 primary sections:

• Heading
• Communications
• Airport Planview
• Additional Runway Information
• Takeoff and Alternate Minimums

The Heading

The 10-9 page heading always starts off with the airport's 4-letter ICAO identifier, the airport's elevation, and the lat/long location.

Moving to the middle of the header, the chart revision date, index number (in most cases, "10-9"), and effective date (if applicable) are listed.

And finally, the airport name and geographic location name (i.e. city) are listed on the right.

Interestingly enough, not all airport pages are labeled "10-9". If you look at the example below, you'll see three different airports in the Denver Metro area, all labeled differently. Denver International is "10-9", Rocky Mountain Metro is "20-9", and Denver Centennial is "40-9".

So why the numbering difference? The first number in the oval is used to sequence different airports in the same city (e.g. Denver).

The primary airport, in this case, Denver International, is listed as "1". After that, numbers are arbitrarily assigned to airports in the city, and they don't indicate an order of airport capability.

Communications

Next up is the communications section. This part is pretty straightforward, and it's also listed on each approach chart for the airport. But if you're setting up the avionics for your departure or destination airports, this can be a good place to grab your frequencies.

Airport Planview

There's a lot to cover in the airport planview, and we'll write a separate article to cover all the details in depth. But to get started, there are a few things that are really useful in the planview.

First off, each runway, runway length, and approach lighting system is labeled to-scale. This gives you a quick overview of the airport's runway sizes and approach lighting capabilities in once glance.

Second, and possibly most importantly after you land, the taxiways, ramps, and buildings are all drawn on the airport diagram. This is really useful, especially when you're flying to a new airport or in low visibility. And when you pair the airport diagram with ForeFlight, you get an up-to-the-second ownship taxi diagram to get you where you want to go.

If you fly into a large or complex airport (or just an unfamiliar airport in low visibility), this really comes in handy on the ground.

Additional Runway Information

Next up comes the runway details in the Additional Runway Information section. Runway lighting, approach light details, visual glideslope indicator lights, and useable runway lengths and widths are all listed here.

Takeoff And Alternate Minimums

When you're planning an IFR flight, this is possibly the most useful section of the 10-9 page, and the biggest advantage you have over FAA charts. Instead of paging through the FAA's A/FD to find takeoff minimums, Obstacle Departure Procedures (ODPs), and alternate minimums, they're all organized and listed here.

The first half of the section lists takeoff mins and ODPs, and the second half of the section lists alternate minimums.

Again, there's much more to talk about than what we can cover here, and we'll go in-depth into the takeoff and alternate minimums section in a future article.

Multi-Page 10-9s At Large Airports

At large and complex airports, there's a lot of information to list out. Just getting the airport diagram labeled can take up an entire page. So when Jeppesen can't fit all the information on to one 10-9, they split it into multiple pages.

When the 10-9 spans more than one page, the first page, is labeled "10-9", and the following pages have a letter added to the end, starting with "A", and working up to "B", "C", etc.

In the Denver International example below, you can see that the 10-9 is split into multiple pages, and the Additional Runway Information, as well as the Takeoff and Alternate Minimums, are listed on the "10-9A" page.

Once you're comfortable using the 10-9 page, you'll find how much quicker it is to plan your flight from start to finish. Add in the ability to navigate your taxi route using an EFB, and you'll never want to go back to the A/FD again.

Why do we fly with Jeppesen charts? They make planning and flying IFR flights quicker and easier. Learn more about their advantages over FAA charts here.