(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.
In: Other
Imagine your head tells you you’re turning right, the sensation on your butt feels like you’re leaning to the right and your eyes can’t tell you anything.
Except that the little round gauge in front of you disagrees. Sometimes your eyes don’t even believe what they’re seeing and the gauge that says level can even blurr into looking slightly to the right (confirming what you’re feeling)
It can be physically impossible to resist sometimes which is called incapacitating spatial disorientation.
Btw this is just one of the spatial disorientations you can feel when flying. There are others but this is called the death spiral – aptly named unfortunately.
Latest Answers