Flight's impact on overland land movement

How do people handle the effect of flight on overland movement? I don't mean as far as distance is concerned, but say to avoid getting lost and or avoiding monsters? Even a first level wizard can have a flying familiar and as they level up, this little spy drone becomes more difficult to kill with stray raptors. And high level characters often can just fly multiple times a day to provide air support and/or guidence.

Thoughts?

 

1) When the adventurers are flying, I roll for encounters as normal, but I allow them to automatically evade any non-flying monsters.

2) When the adventurers have flying scouts, I give non-flying enemies a -1 penalty on surprise rolls against them (e.g. players less likely to be surprised) and set encounter distance at maximum permitted for terrain.

 

 

Awesome as usual Alex! How would you handle it's impact on getting lost?

Hmmm. That's a great question. I think I'd say that a flying creature treats all overland travel as plains (4+). From the point of view of the flyer, the earth below it is basically a flat plain, with occasional huge landmarks (mountains). 

 

For purposes of getting lost, please also consider weather. Precipitation will still obscure line of sight if flying through or under it, and flying above heavy cloud cover will make it difficult/impossible to see the ground.  In fact lately I've been treating some "Lost" results as obscuring weather, and giving the players a decision to either press on without mountains/sun position as landmarks or to wait out the weather before continuing.  This has the weird effect of better weather for parties with good navigators!

Cool, that's what I was thinking!

Oh, and I love the weather idea. Very cool!