(Edit: “Rules,” not “Rating.” Sorry.)
Obviously I don’t know beans about flying, but I see many stories about inexperienced pilots who get disoriented flying through clouds, sometimes even to the point of flying upside-down. Aren’t there instruments on your control panel which tell you your speed, altitude, and orientation? How can you be plummeting towards the ground and not notice?
I hope this question isn’t so ignorant as to be insulting. I know flying is difficult and complicated and it’s easy to criticize from here on the ground. I wish I was skilled enough to know how to fly a plane. I just see many stories about accidents where inexperienced pilots seem to be making apparently ridiculous mistakes.
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Learning to fly on instruments is not natural, and you have to fight what your body is telling you. Your senses might be telling you your turning left and falling, but really you could be straight and level, or turning the other way. I’ve been flying for 20 years, and I still get disoriented at random times. A big one is at night. For example I was coming in on an arrival on a moonless night on the coast, looked over my shoulder for a second, then looked back and I saw dots of lights that I thought were stars, but they were boats and we were also in a turn, so I got super confused and it felt like I was falling sideways, but then I jumped right into the instruments and immediately knew where I was in space again. In this scenario, with no moon, I couldn’t see any horizon so everything ahead of me was black.
This was in an airliner by the way, so even at the professional level it can happen.
If it’s still hard to understand, think of this. Have you ever been in your car while parked, looking down or doing something, and out of the corner of your eye you think you’re moving and you sort of freak out for a second and have a sense of motion, but In reality, the car next to you is moving? That’s what it feels like. Your eyes and your brain are tricking you into believing your body is doing something it’s not.
Learning to trust your instruments, and to maintain a proper scan is key to being successful in flying IFR. Light GA (General Aviation) aircraft today are leagues ahead of what I learned to fly on. Back even just 20 years ago, most of us didn’t have autopilots, or we had very basic one or two axis (Altitude and Heading hold) autopilots, but they could be clunky. Flying in the clouds (Which can usually be bumpy) while operating as a single pilot, navigating with “Green needles” meaning, ground based navigation, and checking and/or cross checking your flight path can be difficult for inexperienced and experienced pilots alike. The advent of high tech autopilots help tremendously with flight management and taking a load off the pilot, which allowed a better scan to occur. That said, it also creates lazy pilots and there are many who simply use the autopilot as a massive crutch, and don’t learn proper scans, which can be disastrous if a failure occurs.
The accidents that occur are also more often than not, non-instrument rated pilots who get caught in instrument flight conditions. I know a handful of guys who were non-IFR rated and found themselves in a cloud or deteriorating conditions and luckily got themselves home. In these cases, pilots have little to no experience flying on instruments, even if they’re right there in front of you. They are easily disoriented or make bad decisions, such as descending to get out of a cloud and they end up crashing, or they try turning around and get disoriented and end up in a spiral and crash.
Flying on instruments is a lot of fun and completely opens up the world to you, but it’s not easy and definitely requires proper discipline. Attempting it without the proper training can be deadly.
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