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Actual IMC experience for student pilots

Actual IMC experience for student pilots

A few days ago I came across a Facebook post by a good friend of mine, who is also a great flight instructor with instrument rating airplane privileges. He is a very active CFII, and teaches a whole bunch of instrument flying in a part of our nation where the weather is IMC for the most part of the year.

VFR into IMC kills
In that post, he mentioned how he used about an hour out of the minimum 3 required towards private pilot certification and took his student into actual IMC conditions, and even introduced him to ILS approaches. My personal and professional opinion about this is as follows –

The 3 hours required in the Private Pilot training are not to be used for anything else but to reiterate the fact that unintentional VFR flight into IMC is deadly, and should be avoided at all times. Proper weather briefing and proper flight planning is of the utmost importance to avoid getting into such a soup.

Still, if we do end up in IMC, the best course of action is to stay calm, maintain positive aircraft control, AND make a 180 degree level turn to get out the same way you got in. Weather is guaranteed to be VMC where you were just a few minutes ago.

Giving any instrument flight training to a basic student pilot, may, unintentionally convey a false sense of security to the student, This is especially true if the student is learning in an advanced GPS/Auto Pilot equipped aircraft.

Deliberate effort has to be made by the flight instructor to ensure that the student pilot understands just how dangerous an unintentional VFR into IMC could be.

Remember, the best course of action in such a situation is to stay calm, maintain positive control of the aircraft, and make a level 180 degree turn to get out the same way you entered in the first place, and the 3 hours required to learn “to fly an airplane with reference to instruments” in private pilot training should be spent just to learn this.

VFR flight into IMC is still the deadliest killer in general aviation.

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