Technique

CRAFT: how to copy an IFR clearance without asking for a repeat

Updated July 2026 · 5 min read

An IFR clearance arrives as roughly fifteen seconds of dense, rapid speech containing five different kinds of information. Trying to write it as prose is hopeless. The fix is knowing the structure in advance: every clearance in the US comes in the same order, and CRAFT gives you a labeled box for each piece before the controller ever keys the mic.

What CRAFT stands for

• C, Clearance limit. Where you are cleared to. Almost always your destination airport.
• R, Route. How you get there: a departure procedure, "radar vectors," airways, or "as filed."
• A, Altitude. Initial altitude, and when to expect the final one. For example, "climb and maintain three thousand, expect seven thousand one zero minutes after departure."
• F, Frequency. The departure frequency you will be handed to after takeoff.
• T, Transponder. Your squawk code.

Before calling clearance delivery, write C-R-A-F-T down the left margin of your pad. You are no longer transcribing a sentence. You are filling in a form.

A worked example

You are N456GH, IFR from Oshkosh to Chicago Midway. You call:

Your pad now reads:

And the readback is just the pad, top to bottom:

The details that trip people up

• Shorthand beats penmanship. "MDW," "AF" for as-filed, an up-arrow for climb. Develop five or six symbols and keep them forever.
• The A line has two numbers. Students reliably catch the initial altitude and drop the "expect" altitude. The expect altitude is your lost-communications altitude; it matters.
• Numbers come in ATC rhythm. "One two five point tree" and "fife four tree two." If you practice hearing them in that rhythm, your pen keeps up. If you practice by reading, it will not.
• Wrong readback beats no readback. A readback is how errors get caught; controllers are required to correct a bad one. Read back everything, confidently, and let the system work.
• "Cleared as filed" still needs the altitude, frequency, and squawk read back. Only the route is being abbreviated.

Why hearing it matters more than reading it

CRAFT is easy to memorize and hard to execute, because the skill is not knowing the boxes. It is filling them at ATC speed while holding a pen. That only comes from reps against a voice. Tower Drill's clearance lessons speak full IFR clearances in controller rhythm, with a different squawk, frequency, altitude, and route every run, then score your spoken readback item by item, so you find out exactly which CRAFT line you keep dropping. There is a full IFR departure capstone that chains clearance, taxi, takeoff, and the handoff to departure, end to end.