(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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We should also talk about instrument procedures, which you learn and rehearse in your instrument training, and then are tested in your practical exam (the one that involves actual flying with an examiner). You only learn to perform these procedures in your training for an instrument rating. These procedures are developed by the FAA for safe departure, enroute travel and approach and landing in instrument conditions (bad visibility, more or less). They are mainly designed to avoid terrain and obstacles, but also to make the flow of air traffic manageable for air traffic controllers, as well as to set you up for a good landing when you pop out of a low cloud deck on your approach. Learning what everything means on these charts, how to do everything, what are the regulations, learning how to use the equipment in your plane properly in order to perform these procedures, and then developing the brain/eye/hand/foot skills to do them smoothly and safely is a big part of instrument training. And you have to do these things well while handling everything else about flying. You can’t even start instrument training until you have a private pilot license and you’ve amassed at least 150 flight hours.
You can fly an instrument procedure in good weather, if you want, but in bad weather, it’s required.
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