(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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You can obtain an instrument rating, but “flying IFR” is flying utilizing *Instrument Flight Rules*. As a basic overview, there’s VMC and IMC, which are the weather conditions you are flying in. Visual Meteorological Conditions (it’s clear outside) or Instrument Meteorological Conditions (it’s cloudy). But those are separate from VFR and IFR which are Visiual Flight Rules (see and avoid, don’t hit anybody; pilot in command is in charge of separation of aircraft) and Instrument Flight Rules (flying on instruments and as direction by a controller; controller is responsible for separation of aircraft.)
As for why flying IFR is so difficult it’s mostly just human error, really. Instrument flying is actually *really* easy. You look at your altimeter and…wow.. it says the exact feet you are above the ground. You look at your airspeed and it tells you how fast you are going relative to the wind around you. You look at your GPS and it tells you how fast you are going relative to the ground. You look at your vertical speed indicator and it tells you how many feet-per-minute you are gaining or losing. You can have a few other instruments that tell you where the ground/terrain obstacles are at and if they are a danger or if other planes are approaching and what their altitudes are relative to you.
You don’t really even have to navigate yourself – the controller does most of it for you. They will tell you to climb to 25,000 feet, or 35,000 feet, or descend to 15,000 feet, etc. They will tell you to turn east, west, north, south, and for how long. Many modern GPS instruments can even auto-fly the plane on exact corridors (highways in the sky).
So, what’s makes it difficult? What’s this “human error”. The error is when pilots, more specifically the pilot’s inner ears and brain tell them they are descending when they are actually level or ascending; if they are turning left or right when they are not turning at all or in the opposite direction. This can occur because our ears can tell us our bodily orientation relative to the world around us but we can *verify that* with our eyes. But if you’re in a cloudy, soupy mix of grey and white you can’t do that. You may feel like you are leaning left and climbing but in reality your instruments are telling you that you are actually flying straight ahead and level. So you might not trust your instruments and initiate a descending right turn…straight into the ground or whatever is below you. That’s dangerous. **TRUST YOUR INSTRUMENTS**.
The other thing that makes flying on instruments so difficult isn’t the actual flying – it’s the rules. There are a ton of rules, procedures, do’s-and-dont’s to flying and especially on instrument rules. Every pilot in the sky has to play by the same set of rules, utilizing the same rulebook, so if anybody ever finds themselves in a weird or unusual situation, or a situation where their sitauational awareness is degraded, they can know the traffic around them will do X, Y, or Z because that is *standard*. There’s rules about turning; there’s rules about departing an airfield; there’s rules about flying an approach using instruments. A whole lot of rules!
I can teach you to fly in a day. How to fly straight and level, turn, climb, descend, talk on the radios. Land and take off well enough so you won’t kill yourself (but it does take practice).
I can teach you to fly utilizing GPS RNAV, VOR, ILS/LOC, NDB, etc (these are all just different types of things you can use to fly on instruments) on the second day.
But you will need to spend weeks, months, or years to really and truly understand all the intricacies, rules, and procedures that would be required of you to fly legally by yourself. Most Joe Schmoes don’t actually learn to fly IFR/instruments. They learn VFR and get a Private Pilot’s license and that’s good enough to fly around the farm/local area.
The US military (Air Force, at least) can teach you the rules and procedures to fly VFR and IFR in about 6-12 months for instance. Others take a lot longer because they’re not flying every day, multiple times per day. Which is why it can take years on the civilian side.
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