These pages regularly urge new private pilots to go on to earn their instrument rating. Especially if you ever want to use a personal airplane for regular, reliable transportation, the rating is pretty much mandatory. If you’re content to only fly on good-weather days in search of expensive hamburgers and to abandon the peace-of-mind the rating confers, you also have to accept that not having it leaves you with fewer options, even when it’s clear and a million.
One of general aviation’s many attractions is the flexibility it affords even the VFR-only pilot who, on a whim, can turn off the radio and still cruise around most of the U.S. without talking to anyone. That same flexibility allows us to go “take a look” at weather conditions and decide whether to continue or return. But stuff happens.
