Talk to me, baby

Ive come to believe that single-pilot IFR in a fully loaded, glass-cockpit-but without using an autopilot-can be the toughest IFR flying you can do. The past month has found me in the clouds with and without students in a couple different airframes that I hadnt recently flown. Thats important because I wasnt in the groove with known power settings and trim. Theres more load on the scan when the plane is less familiar and thats where glass shows its biggest weakness: Visual channel overload.

Key Takeaways:

• Single-pilot IFR in a glass cockpit without autopilot is considered extremely challenging due to the significant visual channel overload from modern displays.
• Unlike legacy cockpits that balanced visual and auditory information, glass cockpits predominantly rely on the visual channel, contributing to pilot overload during hand-flying.
• The author advocates for shifting data from visual to auditory cues in glass cockpits (e.g., voice prompts for weather, navigation) to reduce visual workload, relying on autopilot as a temporary solution.

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