The Greatest Weather Hazard While Flying
By: John Debrey
Tags: Aviation Industry, Weather, Pilot, Aviation, Flying

Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC)

Today I will be presenting why I believe Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) are the most hazardous conditions to fly in.

IMC conditions can be defined as: “meteorological conditions expressed in terms of visibility, distance from cloud, and ceiling, less than the minima specified for visual meteorological conditions.”

What does VMC mean?

VMC stands for visual meteorological conditions, and its minimums are dependent on what kind of airspace you’re in.

How Do Clouds Form?

according to weather.gov

“Clouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. For this to happen, the parcel of air must be saturated, i.e. unable to hold all the water it contains in vapor form, so it starts to condense into a liquid or solid form.”

Currency Vs Proficiency

The words proficiency vs currency are often heard within the aviation world. Currency means that a pilot is technically legal to fly based upon a certain amount of experience in a certain time frame. Proficiency means that you can safely fly in certain conditions. For pilots wanting to fly in IMC conditions, they must hold an instrument rating for each specific category of airplane they fly. This simply means that a pilot who is instrument rated in a single-engine airplane could not fly in IMC conditions without being rated in a multi-engine airplane.

If a pilot wants to fly in IMC conditions they must meet the currency requirements described in the Federal Aviation Regulations (61.57)

The regulation states: Within the 6 calendar months preceding the month of the flight, that person performed and logged at least the following tasks and iterations in an airplane:

(i) Six instrument approaches.

(ii) Holding procedures and tasks.

(iii) Intercepting and tracking courses through the use of navigational electronic systems.

Pilots who mistake currency as the same thing as proficiency are at a high risk of making a fatal mistake, especially when operating in IMC conditions. An easy way to understand the difference between proficiency and currency is currency simply means you’re legally allowed to fly. To me, proficiency means would I feel comfortable flying in IMC conditions with my parents/friends on board with me? The regulations simply states that If I accomplish all of these activities within 6 months I’m good to go. In reality, would I feel comfortable if I did all of these activities in one day then waited till the last day I was current to go fly in poor IMC conditions? The answer is no, when dealing with proficiency, especially when operating in IMC conditions your situational awareness and flying abilities diminish very quickly if you do not practice on a regular basis.

One of the greatest killers in aviation is either private pilots who are not rated to fly in IMC inadvertently entering weather conditions where they cannot tell where the horizon is. This leads to them entering an usual nose-high or nose-low attitude. On average, Private pilots who enter IMC conditions only last about 3 minutes before being killed. The other killer in general aviation would be a pilot who holds an instrument rating but is not proficient to fly in IMC conditions. This scenario is sometimes very difficult to make a judgment call on because it's hard to determine how much proficiency has been lost since the last time you either simulated these conditions or actually flew in IMC conditions. One way pilots can mitigate the risk proficiency is to set personal minimums. Setting personal minimums can be thought of as you personally making your own set of experience/weather minimums to go out and fly in. An example would be not flying is visibility less than 2 statute miles. As your experience goes up pilots can lower their minimums as they deem fit.

Overall, I believe pilots need to be extremely careful when operating in IMC conditions, especially if they do not have an autopilot to rely on. When pilots make personal minimums they need to draw a hard line in the sand and not break them because it could very possibly be that pilot's last flight.

References —

Weather.gov. (n.d.). What causes clouds? https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/clouds/cloud_development/clouds.htm

AirSafetyInstitute. (2014, September 03). 178 Seconds to Live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7t4IR-3mSo

Singleton, B. J. (2016, March 11). AOPA Online Members Only — Currency vs. Proficiency: Current vs. Proficient. https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safety-and-technique/currency-vs-proficiency/currency-vs-proficiency-current-vs-proficient

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