(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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Lots of good answers here, I’m a 420hr VFR pilot who’s half way through my IFR training right now. It’s 40 hours total. Maybe what’s not explained well is you need to focus on many different instruments, not just one…..climb to steeply, and you’ll get to slow and stall….focus on keeping level to much, and maybe you’ll end up in a slight decent or turning. The one time I scared myself and went IMC I was climbing, I kept the rate of climb safe, but I did inadvertently do a full 360 degree turn during the climb. While definitely not recommended, I know plenty of VFR pilots that have accidentally gone IMC and not died…
Also worth noting there’s a difference between flying “IFR” and just VFR into IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) most of the IFR training is learning the different rules, regulations and how to conduct different kind of instrument approaches using radio navigation aids to bring you down below the cloud.
This video by CASA explains what it’s like well:
Flying instruments (without automation) is juggling while walking.
In big jets we have so much automation to make juggling easier that we don’t even notice we’re doing it.
I’m a pilot who had their IFR rating, and what really sold me on the benefit of it was the first time I was in true IFR conditions. The way I was going through the clouds my body was telling me that we were at like a 45 degree bank, but in reality we were flying straight and perfectly level. Crazy the tricks your mind can play on you when your senses are out of whack
Just adding another comment to say you absolutely can learn how to fly a plane.
It honestly is not that hard. I’ve taught dozens and exceedingly few people just can’t do it. Odds are you are not one of them.
Complacency and bad decisions is what causes most deadly accidents. Most of them were very skilled. In fact the skilled ones are the most deadly for a long time in their career
Lots of really good answers, but I think the short of it is:
You have lived with your body for more years than you have been peering at instruments, so when your body is saying everything is fine but your instruments are screaming you’re fucked, who are you going to believe?
IFR training teaches you to ignore your body and trust your instruments. It takes a good long period of study, serious self-discipline, and continuous practice to ignore your own body that’s never let you down before.
Flying on instruments is a complex science, but it isn’t particularly difficult if you have been properly trained and practiced.
Flying by sensors alone is how you miss your squad mate fucking up a Colvert Starburst and getting themselves (and almost the rest of the squad) killed.
The problem is when you have an inexperienced pilot that is flying IMC (no visual reference to the outside)….they are trying to trust a skill that they’ve only just started using at least 40 flight hours prior in training conditions (but now it’s the real deal), they’re managing instructions from ATC over the radio, they’re adjusting things on the instrument panel (like switching from holding a heading to beginning to navigate themselves, altitude changes, etc.), they’re leaning the engine, they’re making sure the prop is set correctly if equipped with a constant speed propeller, they’re needing to remember to follow a checklist when changing a phase of flight, and so on. There’s a lot coming at you while flying and to remove a basic sense like visually referencing things outside the cockpit is not a natural thing to be doing.
As an instrumented rated pilot, two of my biggest weaknesses even after completing my IFR rating are that I can sometimes fixate on things and I will still sometimes fight the trim of the plane (even after I trim it where I need it to be). These are things I sometimes do without even realizing it, so it just goes to show that you have natural instincts and behaviors that you have to learn to re-write through reptition and muscle memory before you can competently do something unnatural.
At least in the military, lots of time is spent IFR training “under the hood” which is an oversized bent visor that for the most part keeps your line of vision within the instrument panel. It simulates flying in pea soup weather, where vertigo can easily set in.
>Aren’t there instruments on your control panel which tell you your speed, altitude, and orientation?
If you want a counter-point for the human element, sometimes sensors ice up or break. When that happens, the autopilot gives up, and says to you “jesus take the wheel!” in a sense. For specific human factors, your body lies to you, if you have no visual cues. An acceleration can feel like a descent, or a roll like something else. You are just used to having visual hints from having your feet planted/a horizon to look at, and you don’t spin in circles until your inner ear equalizes normally. Doing under the hood trainingcan be extremely eye opening, and should honestly be done yearly to remind pilots they are human
It’s actually pretty easy if you practice a bit. For most people the difficulty is in feeling comfortable in a more structured system where you are talking to air traffic control a lot more and there are very specific expectations for your behavior. The reality is that it’s a fairly relaxed environment full of people helping each other get around.
The other difficult aspect is staying aware of what is happening and what you will be doing next. If you get behind it can become mentally overwhelming and difficult to recover.
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