For pilots, why is flying on IFR (“Instrument Flight Rating”) so difficult? Can’t a pilot just focus on their instruments and stay oriented and on course?

Question

(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

Answer 1

It is human instinct to navigate by our natural senses. It can be difficult to overcome that instinct, and ignore your natural senses in favor of machine readouts.

Edit: As an addendum to this, our natural senses are very poorly equipped to navigate in flight. We have no means of knowing how high we are or our absolute orientation, we can only infer these things from other cues like our sense of balance and sight. These cues can be easily hidden or misleading by things like cloud cover, turbulence, acceleration etc.